NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 



NAPOLEON 

AND 

M A C H I AV E L L I 

€tDo €|r^ap^ in political Science 

BY 

FRANK PRESTON STEARNS 

AUTHOR OF "modern ENGLISH PROSE WRITERS" 

"sketches FROM CONCORD AND APPLEDORE" 

" THE LIFE OF BISMARCK " ETC. 



4> 



Cambridge 

IJrinteH at Cbe EibcwiUc |)rcE!B 

1903 



'BC Zo3 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

AUG 29 1903 

Copynglit Entty 

LASS <^ XXc. No 

6> i-/-2> Id O 

COPY B. 



COPYRIGHT, 1903 
BY FRANK PRESTON STEARNS 






3Fn jw:emonam 

CYRUS COBB 

PATRIOT, SOLDIER AND SCULPTOR 



PREFACE 

If there is a science of politics, it must be developed 
as other sciences have been, by an examination and 
comparison of historical data with a view to the dis- 
covery of the causes which underlie important polit- 
ical phenomena, — and not, as is too often done, by 
judging of such phenomena according to purely 
empirical rules. It is equally fallacious to justify polit- 
ical action by its results, or to condemn it on a priori 
grounds; and it is only by the application of the 
inductive method that revolutionary periods, like those 
of Machiavelli and Napoleon, can be properly under- 
stood. 



CONTENTS 

The Man of Destiny i 

The Waterloo Campaign 48 

Goethe's Position in Practical Politics 64 

The Politics of "The Divina Commedta" 72 

Machiavelli's " Prince " 82 

Dante's Political Allegory 121 



NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 

THE French Revolution raged like an awful con- 
flagration, in which human beings, not build- 
ings, were consumed ; and when it had burned 
to ashes, there stood Napoleon, like a compressed 
little god Thor, the most perfectly developed man of 
action in modern times. 

Lord Bacon says, " Augustus Cassar was endowed, 
if ever man was, with a greatness of mind, calm, 
serene, and well ordered ; witness the exceeding great 
actions which he conducted in his early youth." 

This estimate of Bacon's applies even better to 
Napoleon than to Augustus ; for the latter, though 
he showed remarkable judgment and self-command 
at the time of his uncle's death, was not the general 
who won the battle of Philippi. It was Mark An- 
thony who carried the popular party safely through 
that crisis, and historians have not yet given him 
sufficient credit for this. The well-known bust of 
the young Augustus, which is in the Capitoline 
Museum, bears a resemblance to Napoleon, which 
all observers notice ; but at a later time his head did 
not develop to such full, well-rounded capacity. If 



2 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

in addition to the qualities mentioned by Bacon we 
make a list of other virtues, such as diligence, punc- 
tuality, determination, readiness, versatility, correct 
observation, mental composure, firmness, and cour- 
age, Napoleon is one of the few historical charac- 
ters who possessed them all. Then if we add a vivid 
imagination, a rare inventive faculty, and a ready 
appreciation of fine and beautiful things, we may turn 
him about and look at him, on every side, without 
finding a flaw anywhere in him. He seems to be 
a complete man. If not scrupulously veracious, he 
had at least a veracious nature ; the nature of a man 
who loves good work in himself and others. 

No doubt he was ambitious, but of what sort was 
his ambition .-* The quality of ambition, like the qual- 
ity of love, depends upon the individual. It may lead 
to the loftiest virtue or the most contemptible vice. 
Ambition is a plant which requires the sunshine of 
opportunity. The more rapidly we succeed, the more 
ambitious we become. In every college class there 
are men apparently as ambitious as Napoleon was at 
his military school. Some of them die of it. A 
cheap ambition for superiority.did not belong to him ; 
his was of a more solid kind. 

To attempt to penetrate Napoleon's motives by a 
preconceived opinion of him as an exceptional man, 
is a vicious method. If we judge him at all, we must 
suppose him to be actuated by the same motives 
which actuate other men under like conditions. The 
early death of his father left him with the responsi- 
bility of providing for four brothers, of whom Lucien 
alone possessed sufficient talent to make his own way 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 3 

in life. His family, never affluent, were obliged to 
be exceedingly economical. Under these circum- 
stances a virtuous boy, as Napoleon certainly was, 
will feel that his first duty is to obtain a foothold in 
the great world, from which he can hold out a hand 
to the others. We hear that Napoleon was solemn 
and taciturn, " prematurely grave," in his youth, and 
this weight of responsibility is sufficient to account 
for the fact, without seeking an explanation deduced 
from the surprising events of his after life. It has 
even been supposed that he stunted his figure by 
hard study and exercise at the military school ; but 
at the same time it is certain that he did not injure 
his health. From the time of his first military suc- 
cess Napoleon's personal ambition is so interwoven 
with the necessities of his time and of his country 
that it is impossible to separate one from the other. 

Perhaps the most remarkable trait in his character 
is revealed in the fact that his confidence does not 
appear to have been ever misplaced. He surrounded 
himself with the most honest men in France, and 
though he also made use of tricky and unprincipled 
persons, like Talleyrand and Fouche, he always knew 
just how far they were to be trusted. When during 
the hundred days Fouche was playing a double part 
for his own safety. Napoleon perceived it at once, 
and let him know that he understood his position, and 
for that reason was not afraid of him. How are we 
to account for this clear insight except by a pure love 
of veracity. It is only that which guides the histo- 
rian, the philosopher, or the statesman through his 
work. Penetration is also necessary, but penetration 



. 4 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

is like a telescope which needs a human will behind 
it to make it of service. Voltaire had also a pene- 
trating mind, but by no means a profound one. Na- 
poleon was, after all, the one solid entity among the 
Latin races. For the same reason he was universally 
trusted. The French people clung to him as iron 
filings are attracted to a magnet. 

Napoleon's penetrating look has become historical, 
— like that of Alexander of Macedon before him. 
That it became a habit with him, so that he applied 
it to both men and women in a manner which often 
seemed uncivil, is not to be denied ; but in the con- 
fused condition of French affairs after the Revolu- 
tion, having to deaj continually with strange faces, 
it was the only way in which he could judge of his 
customer. 

The objection may be raised that we are describ- 
ing an ideal man and not the real Napoleon. This 
is quite true, but without such an ideal there would 
never have been any real Napoleon as we know him. 
The real is the ideal Napoleon as conditioned by 
external events. It was the ideality in him which 
gave the supernal beauty to his face and illuminates 
the history that he made ; for otherwise he would 
have been merely a French officer, as Bliicher was 
a Prussian officer, and never a genius and a world 
hero. Veracity of fact is always superior to veracity 
of form. It is not uncommon for people to have, 
and at the same time disregard, such evidence and 
testimony as are indispensable for sound judgment 
and right action. On the other hand, it is impossible 
to deal with men on a large scale, particularly in 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 5 

politics, without some faculty of dissimulation, — 
enough at least to enable us to conceal our thoughts ; 
and Napoleon developed this faculty to such perfec- 
tion that the ablest diplomats in Europe were not 
more than a match for this son of Mars, whose only 
education had been in the art of war. 

There are men and women whose inclinations fol- 
low so closely the lines of the universal laws that 
ordinarily they are not obliged to exercise much self- 
control. Napoleon was one of these : he did every- 
thing he undertook in the very best manner, not as a 
matter of principle, but as Raphael and Titian painted 
their pictures. He was not only a great soldier, but 
a great artist ; and this perfect freedom of action 
endowed him with extraordinary power. He could 
throw all the energy of his nature, without reserva- 
tion, into each particular act. This separated him by 
a wide chasm from the ablest men about him, and 
caused them to look upon him almost as a supernat- 
ural personage. In the end, however, it exaggerated 
his self-confidence almost to the extent of a religious 
superstition. 

It was much to Napoleon's advantage — as it was 
to Hamilton's — that he was born on an island, and 
of a different race from the one with which he was 
afterwards identified. He had thus an opportunity 
in the years of formative intelligence of looking at 
France from an external standpoint, and could see 
the French people more exactly as they were, and 
are. Metternich remarked that none of the sover- 
eigns of France had understood the French char- 
acter, or had known how to deal with it so well as 



6 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

Bonaparte. Louis XIV. might say, " I am France ; " 
but Napoleon, in 1809, could have said, "France, I 
own it." He became more and more of a French- 
man as he advanced in life ; but was altogether more 
like an ancient Roman dropped into the nineteenth 
century. He was particularly fond as a boy of read- 
ing Plutarch's Lives ; and it can hardly be doubted 
that he derived his code of morality from that source, 
although in the most atheistic stage of the French 
Revolution he remained a stanch Catholic and cel- 
ebrated mass privately in his chamber when it was 
dangerous to do so. One of Madame Bonaparte's 
friends is reported to have spoken of her taciturn 
son as "one of Plutarch's men." 

No man can escape altogether from the influence 
of early surroundings. Modern Italians are well 
known to be rather tricky, and Corsica has also been 
noted for its smugglers and even pirates. We some- 
times trace the germ of this moral dereliction in 
Napoleon's method of dealing. He had not more of 
the lion in his composition than he had of the fox. 
He won his most decisive battles by tactical tricks 
which no one had ever thought of before ; and his 
practice of carrying off valuable works of art from 
conquered cities, in order to give lustre to his admin- 
istration, reminds one of those plundering Roman 
generals whom even the ancients could- not justify. 
Occasionally we perceive an element in him as if 
the pure brightness of his intellect was momentarily 
shut out by a cloud. The larger the diamond the 
more liable it is to some imperfection. 

It is necessary to distinguish, however, between the 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 7 

virtues of a retired life, in which there is always lei- 
sure to reflect upon the consequences of our conduct, 
and the life of those who act under continual pres- 
sure, and are obliged to decide almost instantaneously 
on matters of the highest importance. To judge 
Napoleon by the same standard as Wordsworth, or 
Emerson, would be an absurdity of -logic. It would 
be hardly just to compare him with Wellington or 
General Sherman. 

We should always remember the element into 
which he was plunged — so young and inexperienced. 
France in the time of Henry IV. was the centre of 
civilization ; but it had become a civilization rotten 
at the core. Its condition during the eighteenth 
century has become proverbial, but Spain, Italy, 
and Portugal were even more demoralized. In all 
the Latin races vice was rampant and virtue perse- 
cuted ; but the vigorous struggle in France between 
Huguenots and Catholics had helped to preserve the 
intellectual energy of the French race. Although 
Protestantism had been crushed out as a popular 
creed, intellectual freedom continued to survive in 
the skepticism of Voltaire and the encyclopaedists, 
while political indifference tolerated theories of gov- 
ernment of the most revolutionary character. There 
were high-minded men in both Spain and Italy, but 
they lived only to suffer. They were isolated in- 
stances, and in neither country was there sufficient 
vitality left to enact a revolution. When religion 
becomes separated from morality — and it \^as just 
this condition which Martin Luther rebelled against 
— civilization has to decline and will continue to do 



8 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

SO, until some great physical shock brings the world 
to its senses, and causes it to realize its true condition. 

At that time it may fairly be stated that Prussia 
and some other portions of Germany, with Sweden, 
Denmark, Hungary, Scotland, and the eastern coast 
of North America were the only nations in a healthy 
moral condition, — the only countries where the com- 
mandments of Moses were respected, and obeyed 
to any considerable degree. England was in a mid- 
way condition between Scotland and France. The 
body politic of Europe evidently required a surgeon, 
and Nature, not wishing her favorite race to go to 
ruin, provided one at the right moment. 

We read of the decline and fall of the Roman Em- 
pire, without realizing that a similar course of events 
has taken place in recent times. There is now a 
united Italy, and Spain has again obtained a consti- 
tutional government, but the Italy of Michael Angelo 
and the Spain of Cervantes exist no longer. Those 
nations have gone down as Rome went down before 
them, and their present influence on the course of 
civilization is little or nothing. France, Germany, 
and Great Britain are full of intellectual energy, and 
each has had its complement of great men during 
the present century. Italy has had two or three, 
and Spain even less. Italian soldiers fought bravely 
under Garibaldi, but were everywhere defeated by 
the Austrians in 1866, from a lack of competent 
commanders ; and the same incompetency was con- 
spicuously apparent in the late contest between 
Spain and the United States. Men of superior 
character and nobility are to a nation what light- 
houses are to the seacoast. 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 9 

It is a saddening investigation to trace the degra- 
dation of Italian art and architecture from the pure, 
refined taste of the fifteenth century, and the noble 
magnificence of the sixteenth, through various trans- 
itions of demoralization and reaction, until the series 
finally ends in the middle of the eighteenth century 
with what might be called a stony grin of horror. In 
the immediate vicinity of the ducal palace at Venice, 
there is a head carved on the base of a tower dedi- 
cated to St. Mary the Beautiful, which Ruskin thus 
describes: "A head, — huge, inhuman, and mon- 
strous, — leering in bestial degradation, too foul to 
be either pictured or described, or to be gazed at for 
more than an instant : yet let it be endured for that 
instant ; for in that head is embodied the type of 
the evil spirit to which Venice was abandoned in the 
fourth period of her decline." 

Similar monstrosities are to be met with in Rome 
and other Italian cities, and the funereal monuments 
in the churches, of that period ; and if not so in- 
decent are equally frivolous and distasteful. What 
more fitting prognostic could there be of a great social 
upheaval. The concluding lines of Byron's tragedy of 
" Marino Faliero " repeat the same evidence, — a pic- 
ture of social conditions which we shudder to con- 
template. When Napoleon arrived before Venice 
with his army, a feeble revolution took place in his 
favor within the city ; so feeble that it might be com- 
pared to the impotent struggles of a paralytic, but it 
served to indicate the popular impulse of the time. 
Napoleon made an end of the decrepit old republic, 
and almost immediately its inhabitants doubled in 



lO NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

number. It was like a surgeon lancing an ulcer. His 
disposing of the city afterwards to the Austrians as 
a makeweight in the negotiations for peace is not so 
creditable to him, but it is not likely that he would 
have done this if it had been avoidable. 

It has been supposed that Spanish dominion was 
the ruin of Italy ; but cities like Milan and Florence 
that were under foreign government were more flour- 
ishing, and preserved a better morale than Venice 
and Rome. After the revolution came the virtuous, 
weak sentimentality of Canova and the Italian opera, 
and in France the mild, negative conservatism of 
Chateaubriand. The world had begun to realize its 
wickedness, and was making a laudable but not very 
earnest effort to behave itself again. 

Previous to Napoleon, the whole continent of Eu- 
rope was covered with an iron network of institutions 
derived from the feudal system, which were as unsuit- 
able to modern modes and customs as the armor of 
the Black Prince would have been for General Grant. 
The human race was not only spiritually miserable, 
but its limbs were fettered. 

Society in the feudal system was like an army in 
winter cantonments. Warfare, though not so deadly 
nor carried on so extensively as at present, was almost 
perpetual, so that subordination and military disci- 
pline prevailed everywhere. Now, an officer in an 
army can strike a soldier, and, if he does it without 
sufficient cause, the latter has a chance of redress by 
applying to his superior officer ; but if a private sol- 
dier strikes an officer, the latter has a right to shoot 
him. This is necessary for military subordination ; 



THE MAN OF DESTINY II 

but apply it to civil affairs and what a condition of 
things you will have. Voltaire was beaten by a 
French lord as any slave might have been ; but when 
he attempted to obtain redress he was imprisoned for 
several months to cure his insolence. Even in Eng- 
land a hundred years ago there was no law which 
could compel a nobleman to pay debts contracted to 
merchants or professional men. The revolutions of 
the seventeenth century had mitigated the evil largely 
in Great Britain ; as did the law reforms of Frederick 
in Prussia, and the reforms of Joseph II. in Austria. 
It was accordingly these three nations which formed 
the barrier against the extension of French influence 
under Napoleon. 

Heroes do not always appear when they are needed, 
nor do they fit exactly the places which are assigned 
to them. There are periods in history in which hu- 
man affairs seem to be given over to the sport of 
circumstances, and a blind, deaf fate mocks all efforts 
to discover a rational sequence of events. There are 
other periods which seem to be in the care of a 
supernatural guidance ; when events take place as if 
according to a prearranged plan, and great men ap- 
pear unexpectedly to play their parts in them, as 
actors come out from behind the scenery of a theatre. 
Of the former sort, the Italian leagues of the fifteenth 
century and the thirty years' war in Germany are. 
conspicuous examples : of the latter are the struggle 
of the American colonies for independence, and the 
consulate and empire in France. Napoleon's mis- 
sion in life was to knock the feudal system in the 
head. 



12 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

Julius Caesar is the only famous man with whom 
we can compare him. They are the two greatest 
soldiers in history, and at the same time great law- 
givers, writers, and revolutionists. Wendell Phillips 
said, " Caesar crossed the Rubicon borne in the arms 
of a people trodden into the dust by a cruel and 
rapacious oligarchy ; " and the world is generally 
coming to that opinion. It was exactly the same 
spirit which animated the soldiers of Napoleon in his 
two Italian campaigns ; but the difference was that 
in his case the oligarchy was without France instead 
of within it. All the kings of Europe were banded 
together in support of hereditary privilege, and this 
"little corporal " stood forth as the champion of char- 
acter and virtue. It was Thor again fighting the 
giants. 

Carlyle calls him "the champion of democracy," 
but that is not likely. As an army officer he would 
naturally have more confidence in subordination as a 
political principle than in equal rights. He was, how- 
ever, the champion of justice, and of equality for all 
classes before the law. Wherever he went with his 
battalions he appeared as a political reformer, — a re- 
organizer in the interest of public morality ; and this 
accounts partly for the marvelous success of his early 
campaigns. The rank and file of the enemy looked 
upon him as a hberator, and actually wished for his 
success. The French fought for a cause, but the 
Austrians fought because they had no alternative. 
Napoleon was a hero in Vienna itself, and Beethoven 
had already dedicated a symphony to him when the 
news came that he had crowned himself at Fontaine- 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 13 

bleau. If Napoleon had died before that event, would 
he not have been considered one of the noblest heroes 
of all time ? 

A government that will endure the storms of his- 
tory must be rooted like the oak. It must have its 
beginning far back in the records of the nation, 
and be endeared to the hearts of the people. It 
must grow underground, as it were, before it comes 
to the surface. The federal Constitution of the 
United States was a natural outcome from the colo- 
nial governments which preceded it ; and these were 
derived, with some simple modifications, from the 
municipal and constitutional governments of Eng- 
land. Such was not the case with the French Di- 
rectory. It had no historical basis, but was merely 
a temporary structure raised upon the ruins of the 
old French monarchy. The people of France were 
not accustomed to it. It was not suited to their 
character and they distrusted it. It was vicious and 
ineffective. Our foreign ambassadors soon discovered 
what unprincipled men were elected to the Directory. 
" Mirabeau," said Napoleon, "was a rascal, but a very 
smart one. There were as great rascals as he on 
the Directory with me, but they were not half so 
smart," The mercantile class distrusted the Direct- 
ory from a lack of faith in its continued existence : 
the poorer classes distrusted it on account of its 
impersonal character. A frequent change of rulers 
has its advantages, but it greatly lessens executive 
responsibility. A reaction against the Directory 
was inevitable, and it would have taken place much 
sooner but for the bad diplomacy of Pitt and the 



14 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

Austrian minister, Thugut. The wars that resulted 
from this diplomacy in fact prevented just what the 
Austrian and English governments wished to accom- 
plish. But for the brilliant campaigns of Moreau 
and Napoleon it is highly probable that the Bourbon 
family would have been reseated on the throne of 
France before the close of the century. The course 
of history sometimes depends on a single will. 

About the year 1800 two counter-revolutions took 
place, of opposite tendencies ; one in France and the 
other in the United States. Let us suppose that 
Napoleon was ambitious to become dictator. The 
fact makes little difference. It was inevitable that 
he should become dictator whether he wished it or 
not. The Romans were the most practical people of 
antiquity, and none more jealous of absolute power; 
and they knew well enough what they were doing 
when in times of public danger they vested the su- 
preme authority in a single person. On Napoleon's 
return from Egypt he found the government of his 
country equally bankrupt in money and reputation ; 
commerce was ruined ; and the armies of the repub- 
lic defeated and demoralized. There was hardly 
more than one opinion : that he was the only man 
who could save the state in this emergency. The 
result justified the measure ; for no sooner had Na- 
poleon been placed at the head of affairs than his 
electric energy penetrated to the most distant pro- 
vinces and into every department of public activity. 
With incredible quickness the treasury was filled, 
trade revived, fresh armies equipped, and the right 
man was everywhere found in his proper place. 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 1 5 

After the victories of Marengo and Hohenlinden, 
Napoleon was confronted by even greater difficulties. 
There was a political organization in France, but 
otherwise the social fabric was everywhere disor- 
dered. The early reformers of the Revolution, espe- 
cially the Girondists, might be compared to the 
alchemist in Hawthorne's fable who killed his wife 
in attempting to remove her birthmark. They de- 
sired to abolish a debased government, a super- 
annuated religion, intolerable class distinctions, and 
social disabilities ; and for the time being they quite 
destroyed government, religion, and good society. 
Alison, a historian more just to Napoleon than some 
later ones, says of France in 1801, "Not only had 
the throne been overturned, the nobility exiled, and 
the landed estates confiscated ; but the institutions 
of religion, law, commerce, and education were almost 
annihilated. Even the establishments of charity had 
shared in the general wreck ; the monastery no 
longer dispensed its munificence to the poor, and 
the doors of the hospitals were closed against the 
indigent sick and wounded." Napoleon perceived 
that before he could govern France he must obtain 
the cooperation of church and school. 

There is nothing that a statesman dreads like 
interfering in questions of religion ; and many who 
have done so have lost their lives in consequence. 
Napoleon, however, restored Catholicism, which was 
the only practical course to pursue, at a single stroke. 
The skepticism of Voltaire had culminated in the 
nihilism of Paine and the atheism of Robespierre, 
and a strong reaction had set in. If Napoleon had 



1 6 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

attempted to introduce Protestantism as a national 
faith, the French people would have become divided 
into hostile camps, and would have fallen an easy 
prey to their enemies. As it happened, there was 
strong opposition in high places to Napoleon's course. 
Moreau, who was the Pompey of his time, set him- 
self against it, and ungraciously refused to attend 
the first mass which was celebrated by the new 
government in Notre Dame. He may have been 
more enlightened than Napoleon, but he was not so 
wise — not so patriotic. The true patriot knows by 
a sense of tact and instinct what is best to be done 
in such cases. 

Napoleon next restored the time-honored names 
of the months and days of the week, for which revo- 
lutionary epithets had been substituted. This he 
accomplished by a single edict, and thereby won 
much credit for himself from all parts of the world. 
He next recalled a hundred and fifty thousand exiles 
who had been living in England and Germany since 
1793, many of them in great destitution. He could 
not restore their confiscated estates to them, though 
it cannot be doubted that they deserved a partial 
indemnity ; but he conciliated them as much as 
possible in other ways. He restored good society by 
recognizing those informal but sensible distinctions 
of classes such as we respect in America ; and, if 
his state receptions were not so brilliant as those of 
Louis XIV., they had at least a superior moral tone. 
Napoleon's own conversation was delightful ; the 
plain sense and simple grandeur of his ideas capti- 
vated everybody ; though his methods of preserving 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 17 

decorum in the drawing-room, and in his own house- 
hold, were sometimes too much like those of the 
camp. When his face grew dark, everybody shiv- 
ered, not knowing where the lightning would strike ; 
but his reprimands were always well deserved, and 
on the whole salutary. It was his way of keeping 
order. His brothers enjoyed a larger share of this 
than others, yet they do not appear to have been 
much afraid of him. 

We cannot but admire the clearness of judgment, 
resolution, and decision, by which he effected these 
radical changes. During the First Consulate, the 
French government securities nearly trebled in 
value ; and the only question asked was, " How could 
this prosperity be maintained and made continuous." 
Napoleon was only thirty-two, and his fame was like 
that of Alexander. It is stated that when Beethoven 
heard that Napoleon had obtained for himself the 
office of life-consul, with power of nominating a suc- 
cessor, he cast the score of his heroic symphony on 
the floor and allowed it to remain there for some 
days. Napoleon's usurpation, as it has been called 
by his enemies, has always been considered by repub- 
licans a severe blow to liberal institutions ; but if we 
compare it with Cromwell's treatment of the British 
Parliament, we find similar underlying causes in both 
instances. There was the same division of opinion 
and uncertainty in the councils of the republican 
leaders in France as that which embarrassed Crom- 
well so much in managing the affairs of the Puri- 
tan party. In both cases there was a strong military 
pressure behind the usurper ; and a strong external 



1 8 NA POLE ON A ND MA CHI A VELLI 

need of concentration. Subsequent events proved 
that Cromwell's life could only be safe by pursuing 
the course he adopted, and we may suspect as much 
in regard to Napoleon. The repetition of such 
events in history would seem to indicate that they 
were unavoidable. No man could have succeeded 
in elevating himself to Napoleon's position through 
personal ambition alone. As in Caesar's case, it was 
necessary to have a strong political party behind 
him ; and to this end it was essential that he should 
assimilate himself to the aims and purposes of his 
party. Not only the French army wished for the 
life-consulship, but a large majority of the French 
people wished it, — as was proved by the vote that 
was taken in ratification of the change of govern- 
ment. Napoleon must have been gratified by this 
expression of public confidence, but, like every great 
constructor, he naturally desired to see the work he 
had begun carried to its completion ; and this was 
even of more importance to him than honor. 

If at the close of two years Napoleon had resigned 
the consulship, which was really a dictatorship, and 
the Directory had again come into power, what 
would have been the consequences .'' What condi- 
tion would France have been in to withstand the 
next coalition of England, Austria, and Russia } 
Every aristocrat in Europe was determined to- crush 
out the dangerous French innovation. It is not 
likely that Napoleon would have found a place in the 
Directory. He had proved his superiority to all of 
the Frenchmen in public life ; such superiority as 
is more dangerous to the possessor than to others. 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 19 

He might have been exiled or even put to death. If 
the sole consulship survived, Moreau would probably 
have been elected in Napoleon's place. In 1800 
Napoleon placed Moreau in command of the best 
army that France possessed, and went to the Ma- 
rengo campaign with a greatly inferior force. Is it 
likely that Moreau, who was afterward implicated in 
the conspiracy of Cadoudal, would have treated Na- 
poleon with equal magnanimity .'' It is more probable 
that Moreau would have stood in the way of Napo- 
leon's employment in any position where he might 
have a chance to distinguish himself. The best 
evidence of this is, that he afterwards fought against 
his own country, in the army of the Tsar of Russia, 
which can only be accounted for on the ground of a 
deep-seated animosity toward Napoleon. ^ 

Perhaps the best excuse for Napoleon's course at 
that time was the codification of French law in the 
interest of equality and universal justice. He felt 
especial interest in this work, which has survived his 
battles, and embodied the best fruits of the French 
Revolution. The codification was almost too hastily 
accomplished, — for it was a work of years, — and 
could only have been performed under the supervi- 
sion of a single mind. After the Code Napoleon had 
been adopted, it was still necessary that it should be 
sustained in practice until the legal profession should 
become accustomed to it. Otherwise, a sudden re- 
volution of the most fickle people in Europe might 

1 Napoleon twice treated Moreau with exceptional magnanimity ; 
and Moreau was killed at Dresden in consequence of an order given 
by Napoleon himself. 



20 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

have overturned the whole structure of revolutionary 
jurisprudence and left it sticking in the mire of re- 
form. The change from life-consul to emperor was 
little more than a nominal one. Napoleon's power 
remained the same, but it was surrounded by more 
formality and court etiquette. He was virtually em- 
peror already, and it was better on many accounts 
that he should be recognized by the proper title. 
He was not a man to care for names but for realities. 
Before he returned from Egypt he wrote to his bro- 
ther, " At twenty-nine, I am already tired of glory." 
It is certain that the etiquette of court life was 
distasteful to him. He repeated this several times, 
adding that elaborate ceremonies were not becoming 
to a soldier. 

The enlightened government of the future should 
be a rational republicanism ; a republicanism founded 
not so much on the rights of the individual as on 
duties to the state ; and it would have been well if 
Napoleon could have resigned his dictatorship, and 
assisted with his wise head in framing a constitu- 
tional government which would have united the best 
qualities of the Roman, the English, and the Amer- 
ican. Such an effort of his genius would be more 
pleasant to contemplate than the long list of his 
battles now carved on the Arc de TriompJie. This, 
however, was not to be ; educated in the army instead 
of in the law, his inclination undoubtedly favored a 
more military form of government. If such a plan 
crossed his mind, we may suppose that he dismissed 
it. There is always a tendency to imperialism in 
democracy, and of this he was ready enough to take 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 21 

advantage. It is only in the high tides, or rather in 
the smooth waters of civilization, that republican 
governments have proved to be possible ; usually in 
communities favored by their geographical position. 
Whether such could have succeeded in France at the 
beginning of the nineteenth century is problematic 
and could only be proved by experiment. We can 
thank our isolated position in America for what was 
accomplished here in 1787 ; accomplished by the 
mighty exertions of men trained and educated in 
English constitutional history. It is safe to conclude 
that a slight external pressure at that time would 
have prevented the adoption of our constitution ; and, 
indeed, such adoption was seriously threatened by 
consideration of the slaveholder's interest. There 
were in Napoleon's day not less than five political 
parties in France, and of these the one which corre- 
sponded most nearly to our Federalists counted the 
smallest number of votes. To the confusion of the 
revolutionary period there had succeeded a confu- 
sion of opinions. In the public mind there is always 
uncertainty and indecision ; and the general public 
naturally turned for help to the man who had a mind 
of his own, and was never found vacillating. The 
problem of the hour was whether or no poor human 
nature was to be crushed again beneath the jugger- 
naut of aristocratic privilege. Napoleon foresaw 
that this was to be fought out in a long and bloody 
conflict, and he prepared himself for the coming- 
struggle. 

According to the Peace of Amiens, which followed 
the French victories of Marengo and Hohenlinden, 



22 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

Napoleon was to withdraw his forces from Switzer- 
land and Italy ; and the British government on its 
part promised to restore Cape Colony in Africa to 
Holland and the island of Malta to the Knights of St. 
John, from whom it had been treacherously pirated. 
Malta, however, was an important strategic position 
for the British cruisers, and possession of the Cape 
of Good Hope secured the maritime highway to India ; 
so that public opinion in England was strongly averse 
to having the conditions of the treaty carried into 
effect ; although Fox and the Liberals were anxious 
for peace, and considered that the pledges of the 
treaty ought to be kept. Having waited a reason- 
able time, therefore, and finding that the British cabi- 
net had no intention of acting in good faith with 
him, Napoleon marched his troops back into Switzer- 
land and Piedmont and took possession again. This 
action was made an excuse at Westminster for the 
renewal of hostilities; and it was at this time that 
Napoleon used that celebrated phrase to the English 
ambassador, " France may be destroyed, but she can- 
not be intimidated." The true cause of the war lay 
much deeper. Ever since the time of the Tudors it 
had been a tradition of English foreign politics that 
the possession of the Low Countries by a strong 
power would be dangerous to English independence. 
Napoleon also recognized this when he said, " Ant- 
werp is a sword pointed at the throat of England ; " 
that is, at the mouth of the Thames. It is true that 
Napoleon was in no wise responsible for the annexa- 
tion of Belgium or the French protectorate in Hol- 
land, but he would have considered it cowardly, as 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 23 

the great mass of the French people would, to have 
surrendered those conquests. It would have been 
considered a base desertion of the Dutch and Bel- 
gian democrats. The same was true of northern 
Italy, Even if Napoleon had been willing to return 
to the ancient boundaries of France for the sake 
of peace and the balance of power, it is not likely 
that this would have availed much. In the temper 
of the French people at that time, excited as they 
were with a rose-colored enthusiasm of reforming the 
whole world, it could only have resulted in Napoleon's 
overthrow, and transferring the reins of government 
to less capable or less practical hands. Even Napo- 
leon's life would not have been safe under such con- 
ditions. He had to go on in the course which destiny 
had prescribed for him, and was actually safer on the 
battlefield than he would have been in Paris, if he 
had pursued the policy which so many historians have 
since prescribed as the proper course for him. He 
recognized this himself, and frequently alluded to it ; 
but few of those about him, and still fewer afterwards 
were able to comprehend what he meant. He was 
like a man between two fires, and this situation ex- 
plains the apparent recklessness with which he often 
acted. 

In the coming struggle the French people were 
not only obliged to contend against the fossilized 
principles of mediaeval Europe, but against the living 
and highly active principle of the balance of power, 
and the still more important principle of national inde- 
pendence. Did Napoleon realize the task that was 
before him "i Did he realize that his enemies could 



24 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

not conclude a lasting peace so long as Holland and 
western Germany were practically united to France ? 
No word ever escaped him from which we can infer 
that he understood this supreme law of modern inter- 
national politics. Great actors in the world's drama 
do not look too far ahead or consider too curiously. 
The practical statesman turns from one object to an- 
other, seizing always the one that is most prominent 
and important. Great events in those times pressed 
upon one another so rapidly that men acted as it were 
from instinct, and had hardly time to exercise fore- 
thought. The German view of Napoleon is that he 
was an instrument in the hands of fate, and like 
Michael Angelo (whose Christ in the Last Judgment 
resembles him) built better "than he knew." Napo- 
leon's motives may not have been philanthropic ; he 
may have desired the extension of French interests 
more than the cause of equal rights, and his personal 
or family interests may have often obscured higher 
objects in his mind. All we can say is that he pur- 
sued a well-defined course in a consistent manner, and 
should receive credit for doing so.^ 

1 This and the foregoing statements concerning Napoleon's inter- 
ference in German affairs are fully supported by the best German 
historians. Menzel's is, I believe, the only one yet translated into 
English, and it is not first-rate, but his evidence is the more valuable 
because he belongs to that class of German writers who have strong 
anti-Gallic sentiments. He fumes over the French occupation of 
western Germany, but he admits that Napoleon's government was 
just, and his reforms highly beneficial. In regard to the war of 1809, 
he flatly contradicts the statements of English historians who allege 
that it was forced by Napoleon. He states that it originated in an 
attempt by the Austrian government to excite an uprising against 
Napoleon in central Germany, but this only resulted in a few isolated 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 25 

When a military genius is born on a throne, or like 
Cromwell obtains possession of one, the rest of the 
world may well look out for itself. If Napoleon had 
been hampered by an Aulic council like that at Vienna, 
or had been tied to a modern English ministry by 
submarine cables, he might not have accomplished 
so very much. It was certainly fortunate for the 
fame of Nelson and Wellington that they were able 
to act in as independent a manner as Napoleon him- 
self. He often profited by the mistakes of his adver- 
saries, but it was more frequently the simple grandeur 
of his ideas that defeated them. He calculated his 
plans so exactly and carried them out to such minute 
perfection that if it had not been for the disasters of 
his Russian expedition, it is difficult to see how he 
could ever have been overcome ; but it might have 
happened in some other manner, a stray bullet, or 
perhaps a fall from his horse. The man who ruined 
him was the unknown person who planned the burn- 
ing of Moscow. That was a catastrophe which he 
had never thought of, and from that hour his fall was 
certain. 

His military movements have been criticised of late 
even by his admirers ; but too much, I think, accord- 
ing to the methods of our own time. Napoleon does 
not appear to me like a gambler in war, as M. Thiers 
and Mr. Ropes are pleased to call him. Those who 
have suggested that in the campaign of 1805 he haz- 
arded his communications to an attack in the rear 

outbreaks. He considers Napoleon the greatest hero of modern 
times. See the American edition, pp. 1459, 147 1, 1472, 1482, 1492, 
1511, 1515. 



26 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

from the Prussians, are not so well informed as 
Napoleon was as to the condition of the Prussian 
army. A year later Napoleon writes to his brother, 
"The preparations that Prussia is making for war 
are ridiculous." In 1805 Prussia was in no condition 
to interfere with Napoleon. 

It is true that he would have been defeated at 
Marengo but for the fortunate arrival of Desaix, and 
Kellermann's brilliant charge ; but it was Napoleon 
who secreted Kellermann in the vineyard, and he 
evidently detached Desaix to march on a parallel road 
so that he might fall on the enemy's flank as soon as 
he heard the sound of the cannon. It was an agree- 
ment like that between Bliicher and Wellington at 
Waterloo, and equally successful. He took too large 
risks, perhaps, in his last German campaign, but the 
result could hardly have been other than it was, and 
the habit of playing a bold game had become fixed 
upon him. During his captivity Napoleon often 
talked the matter over with his companions, but 
never could see how the campaign might have ended 
successfully. 

Whatever special talent his adversaries possessed, 
that Napoleon had also. He was in himself equal 
to all the other generals in Europe. Wellington 
may have matched him in handling troops on the 
battlefield ; but Wellington added nothing to the art 
of war, and as a strategist was not even equal to 
Marmont. He had rare foresight and made a brave 
defense in Portugal ; but he was afraid to face Mas- 
sena in the open field, and accomplished little in 
Spain until Napoleon had withdrawn all the forces 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 2/ 

that could be spared from the peninsula. Bliicher 
was as bold and swift as Wellington was slow and 
cautious ; but in other respects the two were much 
alike. He defeated Napoleon at Laon in 1814, — 
it is true with a superior army, — and he saved the 
battle of Leipsic for the allies, as he did afterward at 
Waterloo. 

Next to Napoleon, the model soldier of the time 
was the Archduke Charles of Austria. His cam- 
paign of 1809 was on both sides the most brilliant 
and bravely fought of the present century. The 
series of actions from Eckmuhl to Ratisbon, extend- 
ing over a space of ten miles, was such as only two 
commanders could perform who perfectly understood 
each other. The Archduke, though defeated, is ad- 
mitted to have displayed great military skill ; and in 
the battle of Essling, which followed soon after, he 
had much the best of the game, although the sudden 
rising of the Danube prevented reinforcements from 
reaching the French army. Wagram was one of the 
most equal conflicts ever fought. There were ninety 
thousand men on either side, and the level plain of 
the Mayfield gave no advantage of position to one 
party or the other. Napoleon was victorious by 
means of an invention which had never before been 
thought of, and which I believe has not been used 
since. He advanced his cannon against the enemy's 
centre almost like a charge of cavalry, — a move- 
ment which could only have succeeded on perfectly 
level ground. 

It is a mistake to suppose that Napoleon was lav- 
ish of the lives of his soldiers. On the contrary, he 



28 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

was as careful of them as possible. He overran both 
Austria and Prussia with a loss of something like 
ten thousand men. The desperate struggles of 1809, 
18 1 3, and 18 1 5 caused a frightful loss of life to both 
sides ; but there was no help for it, and strange as it 
may seem, nobody was to blame for this. 

The Italian nationalists who supported Victor 
Emmanuel and Garibaldi have admitted that Italy 
was never so well governed before as under Napo- 
leon's viceroy ; though particular cities like Florence 
and Venice had been better governed. The numerous 
uprisings in Spain and Italy during the Restoration 
between 1820 and 1848 all had for their object con- 
stitutional government and a return to the Code 
Napoleon. The enlightened princes of southwestern 
Germany, as well as the Duke of Weimar, adopted 
the same platform of their own accord. The same 
influences prevailed even in Portugal after many 
turns of fortune and an obstinate struggle with the 
nobles and clergy. Napoleon's conquests were so 
beneficial that they were even of advantage to coun- 
tries which he treated most severely. There -is no 
evidence that he wished to make war against Prussia. 
It was not for his interest to do so. He could fight 
England, Austria, and Russia together, but he fore- 
saw if Prussia were added to these three powers the 
struggle might be too much for him. 

The Prussians, however, were in a vainglorious 
state of mind, such as the French were in 1870. 
The passage of Napoleon's army across an outlying 
piece of their territory was not a sufficient offense 
of which to make a casus belli. The truth appears 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 29 

to have been that they were jealous of French vic- 
tories and wished for a trial of skill with the great 
conqueror. Napoleon certainly treated Prussia with 
great severity, but the chastisement was not with- 
out favorable results. It enabled Chancellor Stein 
to enact the liberation of the serfs, and to settle the 
land question in a manner greatly to the advantage 
of the common people. It is supposed that Fred- 
erick the Great wished also to make these changes, 
but was deterred from doing so on account of the 
opposition of his army officers, who mostly belonged 
to the nobility. The present vigorous and healthy 
condition of Prussia is owing in no small measure to 
the catastrophe of Jena.^ 

Napoleon was also the liberator of Poland, and, 
in spite of his severe military exactions, his all too 
brief dominion there was looked upon as an oasis in 
the long dreary desert of Russian absolutism. His 
government was not despotic, for everything was 
done according to law, and the capable Poles who 
took service under him found their merits appre- 
ciated as quickly as if they had been born Frenchmen. 
The burning of Moscow was a greater misfortune 
to Poland than the burning of Warsaw would have 
been. 

It appears to have been during the Prussian cam- 
paign of 1806 that Napoleon first conceived the idea 
of obtaining peace by universal dominion. This, 
however, would have been a positive misfortune to 
mankind, and it brought him into conflict with two 
political principles, which he could bend with his 
1 See Professor Seeley's biography of Von Stein. 



30 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI ' 

superhuman strength, but could not break ; so that 
they finally recoiled against him and cast him from 
his throne. These were nationality, and the balance 
of power. 

To quote Hegel again, — and no one is better 
worth quoting, — " It was against the rock of German 
nationality that Napoleon shattered himself." He 
might have added also English and Spanish national- 
ity. It has become a fixed idea in the minds of a 
majority of men that a people speaking the same 
language, of a common origin, and common customs, 
have a right to a government of their own. It is a 
principle which has been centuries in developing, but 
has acquired great power. The heart of humanity 
is in sympathy with it. Consider what it has accom- 
plished since 1820. Belgium has become independ- 
ent, and so have Servia and Bulgaria. Schleswig 
and Holstein have been united with Germany, and 
Germany has become united in itself. The Hunga- 
rians haVe obtained all the independence they require, 
and Italy has become independent and united. It 
was more this feeling that caused the independence 
of the American colonies than any decided misgov- 
ernment on the part of England. The only exception 
to it has been the separation from France of Alsace 
and Lorraine, whose inhabitants were originally Ger- 
man, but had become Gallic through a long period of 
French government. 

There were two causes which may have prevented 
Napoleon from recognizing the right of nationality. 
In the first place, he was without a country of his 
own. He had adopted France and become identified 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 31 

with it ; but his father emigrated to Corsica at a time 
when there was a bitter feeling on the island against 
the French, and Corsica was not enough of itself to 
make a fatherland. In the second place, from his 
early youth until middle life the classes in all adja- 
cent nations were so divided against one another as 
for the time being almost to suppress the feeling for 
nationality. As these disputes, however, became 
finally adjusted, the love of one's own country rose 
superior to the admiration for French liberalism, and 
introduced into the affairs of Europe a new element 
on which the great magician had not sufficiently 
counted. 

Napoleon's enemies have always enumerated among 
his imaginary crimes the removal of the king of Spain 
in favor of his brother Joseph. Now, in reality to 
put an end to such an effeminate, mendacious, and 
altogether disgraceful race as the line of Spanish 
sovereigns, from Philip II. downward, was an act 
of beneficent manliness, for which not only Spain, 
but all other nations ought to have been thankful. 
Professor Seeley says : " The administration of Spain 
had long been in the contemptible hands of Manuel 
Godoy, supposed to be the queen's lover, yet at the 
same time high in the favor of King Charles IV. 
Ferdinand, the heir apparent, headed an opposition ; 
but in character he was not better than the trio he 
opposed, and he had lately been put under arrest on 
suspicion of designs upon his father's life." A pre- 
cious family this, truly, and one better suited to a 
house of correction than a palace. The overthrow 
of Nero was not more perfectly deserved, but Napo- 



32 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

Icon's peremptory method offended the national pride 
of the Spanish people. • They felt that their rights as 
an independent state had been trampled on ; and the 
classes that would have been chiefly benefited by 
the change were the foremost to revolt and showed 
the most bitter opposition to it. Insurrections broke 
out all over the country, and this lack of s avoir fair e 
gave Napoleon more trouble and cost him more lives 
than ten years of warfare with England. 

The explanation of his severe treatment of Prussia 
is simple enough. He said he had " no ill-will against 
Prussia; but if he could not remain at peace with 
her it was necessary to crush her." He reduced the 
Prussian army to twenty thousand men, ruined the 
commerce of the country, and joined its eastern pro- 
vinces to the kingdom of Westphalia. He had not 
counted, however, on Prussian nationality. In 1813 
the people rose to a man, and the nobles pawned their 
jewels for a war contribution. They fought with the 
same desperation as the French did in '95, and with 
even more stubbornness. Wherever Napoleon was 
not present in person his troops were defeated, and 
for the first time he discovered the difference be- 
tween a heterogeneous empire and a substantial 
nationality. 

No less important a principle is the balance of 
power. Without this no country would feel safe 
from the attacks of its neighbors. It is difficult 
enough to keep the peace at any time between two 
or more rival nations, each with its national preju- 
dices, jealousies, and material interests ; but without 
the balance of power peace would be almost impos- 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 33 

sible. Witness the hundred years of warfare between 
England and France in the time of the Plantagenet 
kings. Such purposeless, indiscriminate fighting 
would not be permitted at the present day. The 
chief distinction between the politics of modern Eu- 
rope and those of the Grasco-Roman world consists 
in this principle. Universal domination means politi- 
cal stagnation, the decline of civilization, and barbarian 
conquest. The supremacy of France in Europe, even 
of a French republic, or the supremacy of any single 
nation, would be an international misfortune. Among 
a family of nations, though there may be contention 
and ill feeling, there is also that independence of char- 
acter and interchange of ideas which give moral good 
health. We need the Englishman for his manliness, 
the German for his sincerity and depth of feeling, 
and the Frenchman for his social virtues. It has 
been the very capstone of Bismarck's diplomacy that, 
after having seriously disturbed the balance of power 
in Europe, he was able to reconstruct it again on a 
firmer and more rational basis than before. 

It is far from pleasant to have to take sides against 
such a magnificent man as Napoleon ; but in the end 
we are obliged to do this. He carried matters to 
such an extreme that the minds of all men were in a 
state of tension, so that they felt they could endure 
it no longer. Like many another statesman, he was 
right in the beginning, but wrong at the close of his 
career. Even his partisans in France felt this. It 
seemed as if the iron network of feudalism, which 
Napoleon had shattered, had been forged again into 
a massive chain, which was twisted about the whole 



34 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

of Europe, and was crushing out all freedom of action 
and cheerful human activity. Carlyle, then a student 
at Edinburgh, felt it with his keen, artistic sensibility, 
and described in his old age how people woke up at 
the fall of Napoleon as if from a hideous nightmare. 
Napoleon never perceived it himself ; he had become 
too much of a partisan ; and perhaps could hardly dis- 
tinguish his own interests from those of his country. 
With all his breadth of mind and clear penetration, 
he never could place himself in the position of his 
adversaries. I do not suppose any man could do it. 
He continued to the end fighting the Russians and 
Prussians and Austrians in his own mind. 

The Russian campaign of 1812 was Napoleon's 
first aggressive movement — if we except his occupa- 
tion of Spain — and the only one for which he can 
fairly be blamed. Dr. Ropes brings forward evi- 
dence to prove that the Tsar Alexander was meditat- 
ing war and acting in a manner hostile to his agree- 
ment with Napoleon, but it does not seem likely that 
Alexander would have gone to war of his own accord 
until he could have obtained the support of Austria 
and perhaps of Prussia also.^ Napoleon's ostensible 
complaint was that the Russian government permitted 
the importation of English merchandise contrary to 
Napoleon's embargo. This is probable enough, but 
it was much for Napoleon's interest that it should 
have been permitted. Although there had not been 
since 1805 any direct commercial relations between 

1 Menzel states, however, that the Russian campaign was caused 
by Alexander's demand for the duchy of Warsaw, and his accumula- 
tion of heavy forces on the Polish frontier. 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 35 

England and France, an immense smuggling traffic 
had been carried on by way of Belgium, because 
Frenchmen wanted their coffee and other tropical 
products, and Englishmen were equally anxious for a 
supply of silks and brandy. The traffic that was car- 
ried on through Russia between i8ioandi8i2 was of 
a similar character and served to content people on the 
continent of Europe with the existing political order. 
Green and other English historians have vainly im- 
agined that Napoleon's object was to humiliate their 
country; but Napoleon's mind was too practical and 
his nature too magnanimous for such idle folly. 
Metternich spoke of it as the va banque of a gambler 
whose head has been turned by unlimited successes. 
At the same time, when consulted by the Emperor 
Francis in regard to the probable issue of the cam- 
paign, he expressed no doubt that Napoleon would 
accomplish his object whatever that might be ; and 
it is well that those who look upon it now as a fool- 
hardy enterprise should remember this. I do not 
know that Napoleon at any time gave an explanation 
of his reasons for it, but we may gather them from 
casual observations made at St. Helena. He told Dr. 
O'Meara, in a discourse on Poniatowski, that he in- 
tended to have made him king of Poland. This casts 
light on the subject at once. If Poland could be 
reorganized under French protection, perhaps with 
boundaries more extended than ever before, and with 
the Code Napoleon and a land reform to satisfy the 
cravings of the Polish people, it would form a strong- 
hold in the east of Europe, on which the French 
emperor could always rely for diplomatic support in 



36 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

peace and military assistance in war. It would be a 
breakwater against Russian aggression, and a mili- 
tary post in the rear of Austria and Prussia. Such a 
government would probably have satisfied the aspira- 
tions of the Poles for independence, and would have 
been a very great advantage to them. This evidently 
was Napoleon's plan, and if he had succeeded in 
realizing it, it is difficult to imagine how his enemies 
could ever have gotten the better of him.^ 

That Napoleon did not anticipate the burning of 
Moscow is certain. He confessed that he never 
thought of it ; and it was perhaps the only large city 
in Europe that could have been destroyed in that 
manner. It was composed chiefly of wooden houses, 
and the weather of northern Russia is subject to se- 
vere northwest winds which blow from three to four 
days at a time. Such a conflagration could not have 
happened in Paris or London. The fire engines were 
of a primitive description, and had all been cut so 
that even Napoleon's army was unable to stop the 
conflagration. He described it as the grandest and 
most terrible sight that he had ever witnessed. 

The burning of Moscow was the last desperate 
resort of the Russian government to drive Napoleon 
from the country. In this it succeeded, but in the 
natural order of events it would not have caused 
serious injury to the French army, nor would it have 
prevented Napoleon from opening a vigorous cam- 
paign on the Polish frontier the following spring ; 
and considering the immense destruction of property, 

1 Menzel gives important evidence on this score, but his own re- 
flections are neither judicious nor impartial. Pp. 1 563-1565. 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 37 

it was doubtful if the Russian cause would on the 
whole have been improved by it. It was the prema- 
ture and unprecedented cold during the French retreat 
which so nearly destroyed the grande armee. The 
French soldiers left their ranks, and wandered into 
farmhouses, where they were easily captured by the 
Russians. " In one night," says Napoleon, " I lost 
forty thousand horses." After this the cannon had 
to be left to the enemy, the cavalry was dismounted, 
and the rear of Napoleon's army was left unpro- 
tected. Multitudes were frozen to death, and the 
wonder is that any escaped to tell the tale. Yet 
when they reached the Beresina, one of the broadest 
rivers of Europe, Napoleon was equal to the occasion, 
and so manoeuvred as to deceive the Russian gen- 
erals, and effect a passage. He still remained equal 
to himself, but fate was against him. Fortune, which 
had always favored him thus far, even in the chances 
of escaping death on so many battlefields, now smiled 
on him no longer. It was as if the hand of destiny 
had set a mark beyond which he could not go ; and 
although this included the suffering of millions, per- 
haps it was best that it should be so. The pendulum 
of reform and revolution had swung too far, and thirty 
years of conservatism were needed to counterbalance 
it. Napoleon had no chance after 1812, but the Rus- 
sians also suffered so severely that during the follow- 
ing campaign they were able to accomplish little, and 
but for the assistance of the Prussians must have been 
driven out of Germany. In 18 13 Napoleon won his 
first three battles, with raw levies scarce twenty years 
of age. 



38 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

His downfall was a most terribly magnificent spec- 
tacle. Though he appears so hard-hearted, he really 
loved his men, and the loss of his army in Russia 
was like a perpetual bereavement. Still more keenly 
did he feel the immolation of his old veterans at 
Waterloo. No wonder he said to Fouche, on his last 
return to Paris, " Do not tell me to dare ; I have 
dared too much already." What could be more tragi- 
cal than his last look at France (as we may fancy it), 
from the deck of the Northumberland ! What more 
pathetic than his memoirs ! A voice from St. Helena 
warning Europe to beware of its two great dangers ; 
the " red cotton night-cap," and the monstrous semi- 
barbarous power of Russia — two great avalanches 
ready to descend on civilization. This supreme man 
of action wasting away on a sultry tropical island ! 
Certainly Cassar was more fortunate to fall at the 
base of Pompey's statue. 

For a time it seemed as if, after filling the world 
with confusion for twenty years, he had disappeared 
and left no result behind him. Europe needed rest 
in which to recuperate from her wounds, and this 
could only come through a strong conservative reac- 
tion. The despotism of Metternich and the Holy 
Alliance was more intolerable than the severity of 
Napoleon, with his sumptuary laws and constant mil- 
itary training ; but it was inevitable and had to be 
endured. It seemed for the time being as if the 
whole continent would be Russianized ; but the spirit 
of equal rights was irrepressible. First came the 
revolution at Naples; then in Piedmont, Spain, Por- 
tugal, and Greece; and these were suppressed for 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 39 

the most part by Metternich and the sentimental 
Chateaubriand, and many patriots suffered martyr- 
dom ; yet a deep fermentation went on in society, and 
at length the July revolution in Paris changed the 
whole aspect of affairs in western Europe. 

When a ship loaded with cotton happens to take 
fire it will sometimes burn for days before this is dis- 
covered, and for days afterwards, while all attempts 
to quench the conflagration fail. When the deck 
begins to smqke and becomes too hot for the sailors 
to stand on, they take to their boats and escape as 
they best can. Such was the political situation in 
Europe between 1820 and 1848 ; and Metternich was 
the captain of the vessel. He strove manfully to 
quench the flames, but at length even conservative 
Vienna became too hot for him, and he was obliged 
to retire to the cool shadows of his castle on the 
Rhine. He was a good man in himself and not with- 
out statesmanlike ability, but much too superficial. 
To his mental vision constitutional government must 
lead to republicanism, and republicanism to social- 
ism ; just as our prohibitionists suppose that drink- 
ing wine and beer leads to delirium tremens. 

After many vibrations of the political pendulum 
all Europe except Russia has now adopted the con- 
stitutional form, and the Code Napoleon is dominant 
from Munich to Cadiz, and between Sicily and the 
Straits of Dover. Napoleon is reported to have said 
that his laws would be remembered after his victo- 
ries were forgotten ; but they really belonged to 
one another, and the same principles underlie them 
both. 



40 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

He was not a scrupulous man, and, if he had been, 
would never have accomplished the work he was 
given to do. Like all great natures, he troubled him- 
self little as to what his cotemporaries thought of 
him. He cared more to enact justice in this world 
than to have justice done him in the next. It is 
true he was severe, but the times were such as re- 
quired severity ; and I believe there is no instance in 
which he refused to listen to a suggestion in behalf 
of a revision of judgment. Metternich says that as 
a man he was neither moral nor immoral ; and this 
coming from so vigorous an opponent has a good deal 
of value. Those who have the cares of empires rest- 
ing on them find little leisure to be good according 
to the usual methods of humanity. He has suffered 
somewhat from the stories that Madame Junot and 
other ladies of his court record of him ; and it is 
better to believe these, and give Napoleon the full 
benefit of them, than to attempt any excuse for them. 
They are not charges of a serious nature. 

I was long troubled by hearing of Napoleon's 
crimes until I found an opportunity to examine 
them ; whereupon they all became dissipated like 
morning mist. They are crimes only from the stand- 
point of hereditary privilege. His removal of the 
incapable king of Spain, which has already been 
commented on, is a typical instance of this. It is 
true that the negro general Toussaint died in a 
French prison, but we should be cautious about ac- 
cepting Miss Martineau's statement that his death 
was caused by ill treatment. There was no reason 
why he should have been treated differently from 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 41 

other political prisoners, and Miss Martineau's writ- 
ings are rarely exempt from the influence of the vari- 
ous philanthropies of which she was the champion. 
When a writer's sense of right and wrong becomes 
so far perverted as to treat the protection of national 
industries as a question of morality, there is no rea- 
son why we should pay him or her serious consider- 
ation. Napoleon's transportation of the Jacobin lead- 
ers to Guiana was a relief to French politics, and a 
tardy act of justice for the horrors of the Revolu- 
tion, which could not have been obtained in any 
other manner. The perfection of government would 
only seem to be attained when there is a power above 
the law to rectify and amend its deficiencies. 

Madame De Stael was banished for her imperti- 
nence ; if it be not called downright impudence. A 
woman is never so intolerable as when she imagines 
herself to be an important political factor. Madame 
De Stael permitted herself to become a puppet for 
Napoleon's enemies, and no matter how powerful a 
chief magistrate may be he cannot afford to have 
men or women treat him with disrespect. There 
was great rejoicing among sensible people in Paris at 
her departure ; as there was also in the duchy of 
Weimar when she returned to her villa on the lake 
of Geneva. Her exile was no great hardship, and 
but for its long continuance might even be esteemed 
a blessing. The French people as a rule know too 
little about other countries, and her travels in Ger- 
many, Italy, and England broadened her mind and 
improved the quality of her writing. 

Napoleon's nearest approach to crime, and the 



42 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

most futile of his undertakings, was his divorce from 
Josephine. That, at least, was an offense against 
society. Yet it was not a crime, for many other men 
have done the same without being regarded as crim- 
inals. On his return from Egypt there was some 
trouble between them, but they were reconciled by the 
mediation of Hortense and Eugene. Again, when he 
became emperor he is reported to have had a severe 
struggle over the right of succession ; for Josephine 
wished to have her own son take precedence of Na- 
poleon's brothers. This statement does not come 
from very good authority, and may be incorrect. If 
the truth were known, it would probably appear that 
the divorce originated more from Napoleon's desire 
to have children of his own than from a wish to be- 
come allied to the house of Austria. There are many 
husbands who can sympathize with such a feeling. 

The cardinal sin of Napoleon's life, however, the 
one his enemies lay the severest stress on, was the 
supposed murder of the Due d'Enghien. There never 
was a much clearer case of accessory before the act 
than is found in the conduct of the duke. At the 
same time that Captain Wright landed Cadoudal and 
his accomplices on the French coast, the Due d'Eng- 
hien went to the duchy of Baden and stationed him- 
self close to the French border. The duke was a 
fool to suppose he could make such a move on the 
chessboard without attracting Napoleon's attention. 
Its coincidence with the arrival of a number of mys- 
terious persons in Paris was also noticed. Spies were 
at once set upon the duke's movements, and it was 
discovered that he made nocturnal excursions into 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 43 

French territory. He might have been arrested and 
condemned for this ; but Napoleon waited until all 
the fish had been gathered into his net. It is not 
certainly known that the duke corresponded with 
Pichegru and Cadoudal ; but no sane person doubts 
that he was acquainted with their movements. The 
British government might profess indifference as to 
the methods by which the conspirators intended to 
overthrow Napoleon's government ; but the same ex- 
cuse will not answer for the Due d'Enghien. If an 
honest man is caught among thieves he suffers the 
penalty of his folly. It was the duke's business to 
have known the plans of the conspirators. He was 
court-martialed and executed as the associates of 
Wilkes Booth were court-martialed and executed for 
the murder of Lincoln. The assassination of a chief 
magistrate is the most hideous of all crimes, and 
the slightest effort towards it ought to be punished 
with death. 1 

The massacre of his Turkish prisoners by Napo- 
leon, in Syria, was atrocious enough, but the act was 
decided upon by a council of war, which Kleber, 
Junot, and other generals of high character attended. 
They had no provisions wherewith to feed the prison- 
ers, and, if released, they would have rejoined the 
forces of the enemy. Christian prisoners might 
have been paroled, but for Turks that would have 
been a useless and ridiculous ceremony. They were 

1 Every one should read Napoleon's own account of this conspir- 
acy (veracious on the very face of it) in the Voice from St. Helena, 
vol. i. p. 290, which I did not see myself until after this statement 
was written. The English also consider the execution of Major 
Andre a crime of the same sort. 



44 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

treated as if their parole had already been broken ; 
but it was a bad situation of affairs. 

The only act which appears to have caused him 
remorse was breaking the ice at Austerlitz. The 
cries of the drowning Russians haunted him. It was 
hardly worse than exploding the powder magazine of 
a frigate with hot shot would have been. There is 
no other instance like it in the history of warfare on 
land. Frederick or Marlborough might have done 
the same. 

Napoleon's civil administration is fairly exemplified 
by his treatment of the Jews. When questioned at 
St. Helena as to his reason for this liberality, he 
replied, " I wanted to make them leave off usury and 
become like other men. There were a great many 
Jews in the countries I reigned over ; by removing 
their disabilities, and by putting them on an equality 
with Catholics, Protestants, and others, I hoped to 
make them become good citizens, and conduct them- 
selves like others of the community. I believe that 
I should have succeeded in the end. My reasoning 
with them was — as their rabbins explained to them 
— that they ought not to practice usury to their 
own tribes, but were allowed to do so with Christians 
and others ; that, therefore, as I had restored them to 
all their privileges, and made them equal to my other 
subjects, they must consider me to be the head of 
their nation, like Solomon or Herod, and my subjects 
like brethren of a tribe similar to theirs ; that, con- 
sequently, they were not permitted to practice usury 
with me or them, but to treat us as if we were of the 
tribe of Judah ; that having similar privileges to my 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 45 

other subjects, they were in like manner to pay taxes 
and submit to the laws of conscription and others. 
By this I gained many soldiers. Besides, I should 
have drawn great wealth to France, as the Jews are 
very numerous, and would have flocked to a country 
where they enjoyed such superior privileges. More- 
over, I wanted to establish a universal liberty of con- 
science. My system was to have no predominant 
religion, but to allow perfect liberty of conscience 
and of thought, to make all men equal, whether Pro- 
testants, Catholics, Mahometans, Deists, or others ; 
so that their religion should have no influence in get- 
ting them employment under government." It will 
be remembered that Julius Caesar also wished to alle- 
viate the condition of the Jews. 

What a man is this ! What lofty thought and 
noble statesmanship, expressed in sentences as chaste 
and fragrant as rose petals ! It is the doctrine of 
Christ transferred into practical politics. There is 
nothing like it in Bacon or Locke or Macaulay. Just 
an hour before reading it I was perusing the Phaedo 
of Plato, and it was not easy to believe that I had 
changed from one writer to another. This powder- 
scorched man, with the marble temperament, had a 
most beautiful human soul within him. Such a man 
must either be an autocrat or nothing ; for where 
could he find others whom he might take counsel 
with on equal terms .'' If he had not risen to power 
his whole life would have been an exile. 

Napoleon's bulletins are not so exaggerated as his 
enemies would have you believe ; and yet they do not 
represent him fairly. They were written to suit the 



46 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

taste of the French people, who, in spite of their 
realistic art and literature, had so long been separated 
from reality that the simple truth would no longer 
satisfy them. He must have smiled as he wrote 
them. In his letters to Joseph and in his conver- 
sations at St. Helena we come close to the man him- 
self. The clearness of his thought and force of his 
ideas are emphasized by the unpretending directness 
of his style. It is like taking Manitou iron water to 
read him. He infuses energy into every nerve. If 
he had devoted himself to literature he would have 
been the greatest of French writers, as he is now one 
of the best. He never composed any plays, but he 
knew human nature better than Moliere, and his 
sentiment was purer than Voltaire's or Racine's. He 
liked Eugene Beauharnais as a youth, because he 
wept at the sight of his father's sword. 

Napoleon disciplined the whole of Europe, and 
filled it with heroes. He aroused people from their 
slovenly, mechanical ways, and instructed them to act 
with energy and precision ; he woke them up from 
their drowsy, self-complacent lucubrations and set 
them to thinking in earnest. Wherever he went all 
idlers, parasites, vicious and dissipated persons were 
sent about their business. He disliked the monks be- 
cause they lived in idleness, which he considered the 
root of all evil. We are indebted to Napoleon, not 
only for such grand characters as Ney, Victor, Murat, 
Junot, and Soult, but Wellington, Bliicher, Canning, 
and Von Stein owe their places in history to him. 

Nor can it be doubted that he exercised an influ- 
ence on screat artists. It has been noticed that the 



THE MAN OF DESTINY 4/ 

best poetry of Schiller, Goethe, Byron, and Words- 
worth was written between 1795 and 18 10. Bee- 
thoven also intended at first to dedicate his heroic 
symphony to Napoleon. When we admire them we 
admire Napoleon also, A man, however, who tries 
to change, remodel, and transform everything must 
in the end set all the world against him. 

What comprehensive wisdom in his last directions 
to the child whom he had not seen for so many 
years : '* My son shall reign a mighty monarch. He 
shall do good works and not attempt to avenge my 
death. To win great battles would be but to ape 
me." 

This did not come true of his son, but of his 
nephew; and if Napoleon III. had paid more strict 
attention to it he might not have died an exile in 
England. 



THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 

HUNDREDS of writers have treated this sub- 
ject heretofore, and yet something always 
remains to be said of it. It still continues 
fresh and interesting. If nothing more, I can at least 
expose some of the errors and misstatements of my 
predecessors. This is not an enviable task, but it is 
a useful one. 

The Waterloo campaign is the most interesting 
one of modern times, for its problematic character, 
the fearful loss of life occasioned by it, and a certain 
dramatic quality, like the fifth act of a tragedy, which 
reached its climax in the consignment of Napoleon 
to St. Helena. 

The political importance of the campaign has often 
been estimated too highly. It was the battle of Leip- 
sic in 1813 that broke the power of Napoleon ; and 
after that he had nothing more than a ghost of a 
chance so long as Austria, Prussia, and Russia re- 
mained united against him. That they would have 
remained so is proved by the fact that their alliance 
continued for more than thirty years longer without 
any other object apparently than to preserve the 
peace and prevent democratic revolutions. Those 
who, like Byron, look upon Napoleon as a homicide 
and butcher of mankind cannot be aware that after 
his return from Elba he offered the allies peace dur- 



THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 49 

ing his own and son's lifetime, and that they were 
even disposed to consider these terms. Nothing but 
the terror of Napoleon's genius can excuse the great 
powers for declining his proposals ; and it seems a 
shame that the man who proved himself foremost in 
the art of war should not have been permitted to 
show what he could also do in the arts of peace. 
But it is only on grand occasions that history accom- 
plishes the best results ; and the lives of forty thou- 
sand men were sacrificed within three days, in order 
to maintain the principle of hereditary right in pol- 
itics. 

No one knew better than Napoleon the desperate 
errand on which he went. Even if he had succeeded 
in driving Wellington into the sea and pushing Blii- 
cher across the Rhine, there was little chance that 
he CQuld sustain himself against the forces that would 
afterward have been brought against him. Only a 
continuation of miraculous successes could have 
saved him, and his fate was practically decided be- 
fore the battle of Waterloo was half finished. 

It has been said that his army in this campaign 
was one of the best he ever commanded ; but this is 
hardly a fair statement. The rank and file of his 
troops was largely composed of veterans, but his best 
generals, with the exception of Ney and Soult, were 
gone. Mass^na was an invalid, Junot and Lannes 
were dead, Murat was in Italy, and Victor declined 
to serve. Dr. Ropes thinks Napoleon made a mis- 
take in stationing Davoust at Paris, but it was essen- 
tial to have a reliable man in command at the seat of 
government, and we should be cautious in judging 



50 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

such matters in the hght of subsequent events. To 
have replaced Grouchy with Massena and D'Erlon 
with Victor might have made a great difference in 
the result of the campaign. In addition to this, an 
American student who was residing in Paris during 
the hundred days, and in his old age wrote an ac- 
count of it for " The Atlantic Monthly," noticed that 
the French cavalry were not well mounted. This 
followed as a matter of course from the immense 
destruction of horses during the retreat from Mos- 
cow, and gave the English cavalry, charging down 
the slope of Mont St. Jean, an easy superiority. 

The Duke of Wellington was of opinion that Na- 
poleon would have succeeded better if he had invaded 
Belgium by other lines than those of the Meuse and 
Sambre ; and he certainly could not have succeeded 
worse unless he and his whole army had been cap- 
tured. If it does not appear that his chances might 
have been much improved by pursuing a different 
course, if he had followed the line of the Scheldt and 
attacked Wellington on the extreme right, he might 
have cut the English from their base of supplies, but 
at the same time would have been outflanked strate- 
gically by Bliicher, a general who would not have 
been slow to take advantage of the situation. If, on 
the contrary. Napoleon had marched against Blii- 
cher's left wing, he would thus have thrown the allies 
together, and have been obliged to fight very much 
such a battle as General Beauregard did at Shiloh. 
Prince Bliicher' s biographer blamed Wellington for 
declining to prearrange a point of junction in case of 
Napoleon's advance ; and Wellington replied to this 



THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 51 

that such an attempt would probably have led to a 
false position, than which nothing could be more un- 
fortunate for the allied cause. It would be interest- 
ing to hear this question discussed by an impartial 
expert in military affairs. 

A statement by Napoleon's surgeon at St. Helena 
may have misled some writers in regard to his plan of 
this campaign. He is reported to have said that if 
his subordinates had acted with as much energy as 
they did sometimes, Wellington's army would have 
been captured in cantonments before he had a chance 
to strike a blow. This, however, throws more light 
on Napoleon's manner of talking than on the subject 
before us. Napoleon no doubt felt pretty sore over 
this defeat. For Marshal Ney, with forty thousand 
men, to capture the Duke of Wellington with twice 
that number of troops at his disposal, was such a 
dream as no sane person would imagine. 

Napoleon's plan was one which he had invented 
himself in his first Italian campaign. It was very 
well known, and Bliicher evidently expected from 
first to last that Napoleon would act exactly as he 
did. Wellington, on the other hand, seems to have 
looked for some new invention. 

Napoleon directed his first attack against Bliicher, 
because the Prussian army was stationed nearer to 
the French frontier than Wellington's, and because 
he knew that Bliicher was always ready for a fight. 
He directed Ney to press forward on the road to 
Brussels and hold Wellington in check, while he 
dealt with Bliicher himself. Having defeated Bliicher, 
he would transfer the bulk of his army to unite with 
Ney and fight Wellington. 



52 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

Marshal Ney performed his part of the programme 
in a satisfactory manner. It is thought that if he 
had attacked Wellington at once at Quatre Bras he 
might have defeated him ; but what could Ney have 
gained by this ? If he had defeated the small force 
opposed to him and pursued it, he would have run 
the risk of being overpowered by a superior force 
coming to its support, while he would be widening 
the distance between himself and his own reinforce- 
ments. That the whole body of Ney's troops was 
not present at the battle was owing to a request 
which Napoleon sent to him for assistance, which 
was delivered to one of his subordinates. Welling- 
ton remained on the defensive until the close of the 
day, when, having been heavily reinforced, he ordered 
a forward movement, and Ney's army retired from 
the field in good order, Wellington, with a force 
numerically superior to his adversary, gained no ad- 
vantage except the possession of the ground. 

Meanwhile, " Old Forwards" was carrying on with 
Napoleon one of the toughest struggles of the times. 
General Hambley avers that Napoleon directed his 
first attack against Bliicher because the French were 
accustomed to defeating the Prussians. Such an 
opinion by a writer on military affairs ! The plain 
fact is that the French have never defeated the 
Prussians except when commanded by Napoleon, and 
at Davoust's battle of Auerstadt. Bliicher defeated 
them repeatedly in 1813, and in 18 14 he defeated 
Napoleon himself at Laon, though it is true with 
some advantages on his side. 

The Prussian army consisted of soldiers of two 



THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 53 

years' service, and only three years' training. Blii- 
cher's cavalry may have been superior to Napoleon's, 
but he had no body of trained veterans like the Old 
Guard or Wellington's Highlanders. He was obliged 
to concentrate at or near Ligny on the best ground 
he could find, and the position was not a strong one. 
Otherwise he must have retreated on the road to 
Li^ge and have been hopelessly separated from Wel- 
lington. Bliicher's Prussian biographer complained 
that Wellington did not come to the assistance of the 
Prussians, but it is doubtful if Bliicher ever com- 
plained of it. His army was larger than any force 
that Napoleon would be able to bring against him, 
and why should he require assistance .'' ^ 

The battle of Ligny in its general character resem- 
bled Wagram. Bliicher, like the Archduke Charles, 
attempted to turn Napoleon's left wing ; but at the 
very moment when he seemed likely to succeed, Na- 
poleon, by a sudden attack of the Guards, captured 
the village of Ligny and compelled him to retreat. 
Gustavus Adolphus gained the battle of Britenfeld 
by similar tactics. If Bliicher had merely stood on 
the defensive, which it was all that was necessary to 
do to block Napoleon's game, this might not have 
happened. Every nation has its style in war ; and 
there are no soldiers like the French for fighting in 
a street or storming a fortified position. Bliicher 
does not appear to have realized this. He charged 
at the captured position at the head of his cavalry, 

1 The story that Wellington examined Bliicher's ground and dis- 
approved of it, contradicts itself, for it represents Wellington speak- 
ing as if he had seen Bliicher's army in position, which it was quite 
impossible for him to have done. 



54 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

but his horse was killed by the fragment of a bomb- 
shell and the attack was repulsed. The Prussians 
retreated in good order, and Napoleon appears to 
have captured few guns and not many prisoners ex- 
cept those who were wounded. The loss of the French 
was about twelve thousand killed and wounded ; that 
of the Prussians from twelve to fifteen thousand. ^ 

An incident occurred during this battle which 
proves how narrow the line often is between success 
and failure. Napoleon sent a request to Marshal 
Ney for a body of eight or ten thousand men (if he 
could possibly spare them) to attack the Prussians on 
the right wing. If this request could have been com- 
plied with, Ligny would have been a Waterloo for 
Bliicher ; a large portion of his left wing must inevi- 
tably have been captured and his army compelled to 
evacuate Belgium altogether. The request was de- 
livered to a general of division who was on the road 
to Quatre Bras, and who undertook to fulfill it on his 
own responsibility. He and his forces were already 
within sight of the Prussians when the contrary order 
reached him to retrace his steps. Marshal d'Erlon 
is credited with having prevented this stroke of 
genius, which otherwise might have changed the cur- 
rent of French history. 

The next forenoon Grouchy was sent in pursuit of 
the Prussians with about thirty thousand men. Ac- 
cording to Thiers, Grouchy was a political appoint- 

1 Dr. Ropes places the Prussian loss on French authority at eight- 
een or twenty thousand. German writers are much more trustworthy 
on such points, however, than the French : witness the report of the 
Prussian staff for the war of 1870 and 1871. 



THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 55 

ment, — the sort that has often occasioned mischief 
in military affairs. He belonged to the old noblesse 
whom Napoleon was desirous to conciliate ; was a 
brave soldier and formerly commanded the Old 
Guard. Napoleon, however, was obliged to choose 
between Grouchy, Vandamme, and Gerard. The 
position was one of great delicacy and required a 
skillful and experienced general. In 1809, after the 
battle of Eckmiihl, Napoleon dispatched Massena in 
pursuit of the Austrians, while he himself took the 
road to Vienna. 

Grouchy did not at all like the commission that 
was given him. He was no doubt very much afraid 
of Bliicher, and with good reason. Blucher had an 
available force of forty thousand more than he him- 
self commanded, and his own troops had suffered 
but little less than the Prussians on the preceding 
day. What was there to prevent Blucher from turn- 
ing on him and overpowering him ; Blucher was ori- 
ginally a cavalry general, and possessed all the dash 
and rapidity of action which belongs to that branch 
of the service. The fact that on the afternoon of 
June 18 Grouchy was obliged to fight a battle with 
General Teilemann shows that if Blucher had not 
gone to Wellington's assistance Grouchy would have 
been obliged at that time to encounter the whole 
Prussian force ; and the destruction of Grouchy' s 
command would have been almost as severe a blow 
to Napoleon as Waterloo itself. 

In the vindication of his conduct, which he pub- 
lished on his return from exile. Marshal Grouchy says 
of his last interview with the emperor : — 



56 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

I replied to him, that the Prussians had commenced 
their retreat at ten o'clock the evening before ; that much 
time must elapse before my troops, who were scattered 
over the plain, were cleaning their guns and making their 
soup, and were not expecting to be called upon to march 
that day, could be put in movement ; that the enemy had 
seventeen or eighteen hours' start of the troops sent in 
pursuit ; that although the reports of the cavalry gave no 
definite information as to the direction of the retreat of 
the mass of the Prussian army, it was apparently on Na- 
mur that they were retiring ; and that thus, in following 
them, I should find myself isolated, separated from him, 
and out of range of his movements. 

"These observations," Marshal Grouchy states, 
"were not Mrell received; the emperor repeated his 
orders, adding that it w^as for me to discover the 
route taken by Marshal Blucher." ^ 

Grouchy's objections are valid enough, but unfor- 
tunately there v^^as nothing else to be done. The 
wonder is that Napoleon, finding that Grouchy did 
not like the business, should not have superseded 
him at once, Vandamme was an experienced offi- 
cer, and might have understood the situation better. 
Soult in such an undertaking might have won great 
renown, but Napoleon retained Soult not only for his 
knowledge of Wellington's tactics, but as the best 
person to take command of the army in case of acci- 
dent to himself. 

At Gembloux, seven or eight miles from Ligny, 
the highway divides going north and east. Grouchy 
apparently spent the 17th of June in discovering 
which direction Bliicher had taken. Now any one 

1 The Campaign at Waterloo, J. C. Ropes, p. 207. 



THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN S7 

who examines the positions of the four armies on the 
morning of June i8 will perceive that Napoleon was 
in a trap. Bliicher was at Wavre, which is about 
fourteen miles from the field of Waterloo ; whereas 
Grouchy was fully eighteen miles from Wavre, and 
twenty miles distant from Napoleon, who probably 
delayed opening the battle on that account. 

At half past eleven Grouchy had reached Wal- 
heim, only six miles north of Gembloux, where he 
was greeted with the sound of Napoleon's cannon 
at Mont St. Jean, and as is well known was urged 
by Vandamme and Gerard to go to his support. If 
Grouchy did not know where he was and what he 
was doing, this was clearly his best line of action, 
though Bliicher still had the inside track and could 
have reached the field of battle nearly an hour before 
Grouchy could. Yet in this case we ought to con- 
sider not only what actually happened but what 
might have happened. If Wellington's army had 
been defeated by three o'clock in the afternoon, 
Grouchy's assistance would not have been required, 
and he would have found himself awkwardly situated 
with regard to Bliicher. He would seem to have 
been more culpable for the slowness of his move- 
ments than for erroneous judgment. Why Bliicher 
delayed so long to reinforce Wellington has not yet 
been explained. One Prussian army corps arrived on 
the field about five p. m., and seriously embarrassed 
Napoleon's movements ; but it was more than two 
hours later when the main force of the Prussians 
attacked the right wing of the French army. 

The material of Wellington's force was not nearly 



58 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

SO good as Bliicher's. Only two fifths of the troops 
drawn up to oppose Napoleon at Mont St. Jean were 
British soldiers, of which nearly a third were volun- 
teers ; one fifth was made up of Hanoverians and 
Brunswick Prussians ; and the remainder were Dutch 
and Belgians.^ Wellington's Highlanders, however, 
may be counted equal to Napoleon's Old Guard, and 
he had also a very effective cavalry force. Napoleon, 
of course, was aware of the constitution of his oppo- 
nent's army and probably expected to defeat it quite 
easily. 

The emperor alleges in his memoirs that he sent 
an order to Grouchy on the evening of the seven- 
teenth requesting him to come to his assistance on 
the following day if he could possibly do so without 
Bliicher's knowing it. The truth of this has been 
doubted, and Grouchy has denied ever receiving such 
a dispatch. It is possible that Napoleon intended to 
send such an order, that he neglected to send it, and 
afterwards supposed that he had sent it ; but it is 
quite as possible that being sent to Wavre it fell into 
the hands of the Prussians, or that Grouchy being at 
Gembloux, Napoleon's orderly did not succeed in 
finding him until late in the following afternoon. 
Thiers states that a Polish officer was intrusted with 
this dispatch, and that he never afterwards was heard 
from. 

Marshal Marmontf in his report on the battle of 

1 This is General Hambley ; but Mr. J. C. Ropes says about twenty- 
four thousand British, twenty thousand Germans, and twenty-three 
thousand Dutch and Belgian troops. English battles have always 
been fought largely by soldiers of other nations. 



THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 59 

Salamanca, notices that Wellington had a faculty for 
selecting strong positions, and his position at Mont 
St. Jean was no doubt the strongest he ever occu- 
pied.i The farm of Hougomont and the village of 
La Haye Sainte were like two castles in front of his 
line, which protected it from any immediate attack on 
the right and centre, while his second line was posted 
in comparative security behind the crest of the ridge. 
Yet Wellington did not anticipate Napoleon's attack 
on his left wing, and stationed his weakest troops 
there. 

He thus came very near being defeated at the out- 
set. According to the statement of his biographer, 
Rev. George Robert Gleig, the Dutch and Belgian 
troops all ran away, leaving only three or four thou- 
sand English soldiers to contend with a column of 
twelve or fifteen thousand French. General Pictou, 
who was in command, gave the order to advance, and 
was instantly killed by a musket ball. If this had 
happened before the order was given, it seems likely 
that in the confusion that ensues at the death of a 
commanding officer, the French attack would have 
succeeded. 

Marshal D'Erlon has been censured by all Napo- 
leon's sympathizers for the formation of the column 
with which he made this attack. There can be no 
doubt that it was not properly supported by cavalry ; 
but why did not Napoleon superintend such an im- 
portant movement himself? A Prussian corps d'ar- 
me'e had already been observed on the heights of St. 

1 It was at Mont St. Jean the battle took place. Waterloo is 
more than a mile on the road to Brussels. 



6o NAPOLEON AND MA CHI AVE LLI 

Lambert before the order for attack was given. Na- 
poleon ought to have reahzed the deadly peril in 
which he and his army were placed. If Junot or 
Victor had organized the movement, who can doubt 
but that it would have succeeded } Why did not Na- 
poleon support it with Kellermann's cavalry division 
and six or seven battalions of the middle guard .-* He 
might have concentrated two fifths of his force on 
that single point without danger to the rest of his 
line, or if he had advanced his right wing in line for 
a determined conflict, who can doubt that numbers 
and discipline combined would have carried the day ? 

Napoleon's capture of La Haye Sainte two hours 
later was a decided advantage, and gave him a second 
opportunity to win the battle. This, however, was 
neutralized by the attack of the Prussian corps 
shortly afterward on the right flank of the French. 
From this time forward Wellington had the advan- 
tage of numbers, and Napoleon's army was in such a 
position that nothing but the blunders of his oppo- 
nents could save it from defeat. Napoleon was 
obliged to withdraw troops from his centre to protect 
his right wing, and thus weakened it too much for a 
vigorous offensive movement. There were now 
more German than English troops on the battle- 
field. 

The failure of Ney's cavalry charges points directly 
to the statements already made in regard to the weak- 
ness of Napoleon's cavalry. Not a single square of 
the enemy was broken by them, whereas in 1870 the 
Berlin Guards rode down the French ranks at Grave- 
lotte in spite of the rapid firing of the infantry. The 



THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 6 1 

Dutch regiments on Wellington's centre suffered 
most severely, but succeeded in preserving their for- 
mation. 

Dr. Ropes is the first writer in English who has 
given a clear and satisfactory account of the close of 
the battle. According to Thiers, the Guards made 
their attack in column about the time of the arrival 
of Blucher, when the French line broke behind them 
and they were left at the mercy of Wellington's can- 
non, and refusing to surrender were immolated on 
the field. This is melodramatic enough, but in order 
to believe it we must suppose that Napoleon delayed 
a final attack until the Prussian regiments had begun 
to deploy on his right ; which is the same as suppos- 
ing that Napoleon had suddenly lost his senses. 

Dr. Ropes's account is supported by the statement 
of a Captain Powell, who fought against Napoleon's 
Guard in the Highlanders. It was not the Old Guard 
but the Middle Guard which was defeated, and Cap- 
tain Powell attributes it to the sudden apparition of 
the Highlanders (who had been lying on the ground) 
and the deadly volley that they poured into the ad- 
vancing column. This unexpected collision was caused 
by the volume of smoke which rolled between the 
two armies, and as the Highlanders had orders to 
fire while the Guard had orders to reserve their fire, 
the latter were taken at a disadvantage from which 
they did not recover. 

Captain Powell's testimony is valuable here. He 
states that the Highlanders pursued the Middle 
Guard for nearly a quarter of a mile, until finding 
themselves outflanked by the advance of Napoleon's 



62 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLT 

Old Guard they retired again to their former posi- 
tion. 

The Old Guard was itself outflanked in turn by a 
British division coming up from Hougomont, and 
finding itself caught in a trap wisely withdrew with- 
out serious loss. 

Wellington's cavalry charge, by which he had re- 
covered La Haye Sainte, appears to have been con- 
temporary with Bluchers attack on tlie French 
right. 

I believe no authentic statement of the English 
loss at Waterloo has ever been made public. Thiers 
places Napoleon's loss at about thirty thousand killed 
and wounded ; the English at about the same ; and 
the Prussians at eight or ten thousand. This is no- 
thing but national vanity. The British loss is gen- 
erally admitted to have been over twenty thousand, 
but that it should be equal to that of the French in 
such a conflict is incredible. The Prussian loss may 
have been between three and five thousand, but cer- 
tainly not more. 

Wellington's management of the battle after Na- 
poleon's first attack has never been found fault with. 
His subordinates also were everywhere equal to the 
occasion. As a defensive action, however, it was not 
so remarkable as Napoleon's second day at Leipsic, 
when with an army composed largely of French boys 
he preserved an unbroken line against a force nearly 
twice as large as his own. 

What Napoleon evidently did not reckon on in this 
campaign was the strategy of Bliicher. He supposed 
after the battle of Ligny that Bliicher would retreat 



THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 63 

on Namur or Li^ge, and he misled Grouchy some- 
what by suggesting this. If he had foreseen Blii- 
cher's action, he would certainly have taken greater 
precautions against it. 

We could admire Wellington more perfectly if he 
had never pointed to the playground at Eton and 
said, " There Waterloo was won." Napoleon would 
not have plumed himself on such a victory. He does 
not appear to have plumed himself on any of his ex- 
ploits. The fame of forty victories was no comfort 
to him at St. Helena. The man was too great for 
that. 



GOETHE IN PRACTICAL POLITICS. 

GOETHE himself has said that the faults of 
great men seem exaggerated as well as their 
virtues ; and if we apply this principle to his 
own case, it ought to remove much of the odium which 
rests on his name. Some of the accusations which 
have been brought against him are undoubtedly just ; 
but it is equally certain that others have originated 
either in party prejudice or from the jealousy of his 
literary contemporaries. He is certainly to blame for 
his desertion of Frederika, and probably for other 
flirtations, — though such behavior does not always 
seem to militate against a man's character. Goethe's 
love affairs, though by no means to his credit, were 
of quite a different sort from the immorality of Byron, 
Burns, and Heine. The accusation, however, that he 
was a selfish aristocrat, unpatriotic, insensible to the 
sufferings of the poor, and opposed to the popular 
and reformatory movements of his time, is untrue 
and unjust, and can easily be disproved. That he 
was an aristocrat cannot be doubted ; but so was 
Walter Scott, for they were both brought up and 
educated at a period when aristocracy was considered 
the natural order of society. 

Of all classes of people, none would seem to be so 
unfitted — from their tenderness of feeling, their pic- 
torial habit of mind, and their sensitive temperament 



GOETHE IN PRACTICAL POLITICS 65 

— for practical politics, as poets and artists ; and they 
have generally recognized this themselves. Emerson 
says, — 

If I leave my study for their politique, 

Which at the best is trick, 

The angry muse puts confusion in my brain. 

There is scarcely a reflection in Shakespeare of the 
religious and physical struggle in which he was born 
and brought up ; and though Milton accepted a posi- 
tion in Cromwell's government, it proved more to his 
own disadvantage after the restoration of the Stuarts 
than for the benefit of his country. The angry muse 
likewise drove Dante into banishment for joining the 
party of the Ghibellines. 

Yet there are occasions of public exigency when 
it is the duty of every man, whatever his calling, to 
devote himself unreservedly to the welfare of the 
state. No one was more ready than Goethe to admit 
the truth of this, but the opportunity to prove his 
patriotism never came to him. 

He was born in a community more free than any 
city in the United States, for there was neither state 
nor national authority above it ; but, as often happens 
in small independent communities, public opinion was 
so tyrannical there that Goethe was glad to escape 
from it, even to the conventional atmosphere of the 
Weimar court. No person, he says, was permitted 
to be conspicuous in Frankfort, either for good or for 
evil ; but Goethe could not help being conspicuous, 
any more than Arthur Plantagenet could help being 
the son of Geoffrey. At Weimar Goethe was advanced 
from one position in the duke's service to another, 



66 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

until at last he became minister of state, and was the 
confidential adviser of his patron all through the Na- 
poleonic wars. 

How was he to conduct himself in such a position ? 
How do the members of presidents' cabinets conduct 
themselves ? Are they not as reticent as possible in 
regard to all matters which are immediately under 
discussion ? They give an opinion, perhaps, in order 
to avoid the appearance of secrecy, but they guard 
themselves carefully against anything which might 
compromise the administration. So anything which 
Goethe might have said, any political opinion he might 
have uttered, would at once be attributed to the grand 
duke, and pass current over the whole of Europe, 
Under these circumstances, he had no resource but 
absolute reticence ; and for this plain and self-evident 
reason almost nothing is known of his opinions con- 
cerning the important events of his time. It is one 
of the most common and stupid of blunders to sup- 
pose that a silent man is an apathetic one. 

Weimar is a small duchy, lying between two king- 
doms ; but so great is the veneration of Germans for 
hereditary right that its boundaries have always been 
respected. There was no such feeling in Napoleon's 
composition ; he abrogated the charters of free cities, 
and exiled many German princes from their domin- 
ions. There was danger during his conflict with 
Prussia that Weimar would be forcibly annexed to 
one side or the other on the ground of military neces- 
sity. The only resource in such times for a state 
without any military force was to be as cautiously 
neutral as possible. That was the part which the 



GOETHE IN PRACTICAL POLITICS 67 

grand duke and Goethe were obliged to act, not only 
for their own benefit, but for that of their people ; 
and they would seem to have played it to perfec- 
tion. 

Napoleon passed through Weimar in 1806 without 
molesting man or property. He sent for Goethe to 
take dinner with him ; and then for the first and only 
time either of them met his equal. They were more 
alike perhaps than is generally supposed, — one the 
apostle of liberalism (after a fashion) in politics, the 
other in intellectual life ; Goethe was also a con- 
queror. The accusation that he behaved in a servile 
manner toward Napoleon is too grotesque to be con- 
sidered for a moment. The emperor said to his mar- 
shals after the poet had withdrawn from the table, 
" There is a man for you." 

Goethe possessed the rare faculty of seeing both 
sides of a question. It is a faculty which belongs by 
good right to the dramatic poet, for it is only the dra- 
matic habit that will cultivate it. He was both liberal 
and conservative. He says in one of his brief pro- 
verbial poems, " Hold fast to the old, but ever with 
open hand welcome the new." He has been blamed 
by his countrymen for his partiality toward Napoleon, 
which was supposed to be the result of personal ad- 
miration. There is quite as good reason for believing 
that he had an equal sympathy with the reforms 
which Napoleon enacted in Germany, Italy, and 
Spain. Even the socialists admit that Napoleon con- 
ferred great benefits on Western Germany. Could 
the impartial Goethe be oblivious to what was taking 
place in the states adjacent to Weimar } 



68 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

Liberalism does not mean the same in Germany 
that it does in the United States. Its aim is not a 
republic, but rather a monarchical democracy like 
that in England. In the revolution of 1848 the Ger- 
man republicans were almost all socialists. In 
Goethe's time liberalism meant the abolition of class 
privileges, the right of voting taxes and armaments 
by elective assemblies, and freedom of the press. 
In 18 1 3 many of the German liberals, like the enthu- 
siastic Heine, took sides with Napoleon ; but a larger 
number joined the Prussians on the ground of na- 
tionality, being desirous to free themselves from 
French domination. It is known that Goethe's son 
was at that time an ardent Napoleonist, and that 
Goethe himself discouraged recruiting for the Prus- 
sian army in Weimar. Surely the man who could 
predict an earthquake in Sicily was able to foresee the 
tremendous conservative reaction which would imme- 
diately follow Napoleon's downfall ; but Goethe's 
liberalism is not a matter of inference or con- 
jecture. 

Less than one year after the battle of Waterloo, 
first of all the German princes, the Duke Carl August 
of Weimar granted his people a constitutional govern- 
ment which admitted freedom of the press, the right 
of franchise for all citizens, and the right of voting 
taxes. Can any one suppose this was done in oppo- 
sition to Goethe's advice .-' We know the characters 
of the two men. Both were reserved ; but Goethe 
was kindly, conciliatory, and always ready to listen 
to the opinions of others, while the duke was natu- 
rally haughty, self-willed, and autocratic. It is thus 



GOETHE IN PRACTICAL POLITICS 69 

that Goethe represented him in the character of 
Thoas. 

Unfortunately, the Holy Alliance set its iron jack- 
boot on this incipient growth of liberalism, and 
crushed it out. Carl August was notified by the 
great powers that he must abandon the position he 
had assumed, and no choice but obedience was left 
him. With the spasmodic outbreaks which followed 
during the next ten years, in various parts of Ger- 
many, Goethe had little sympathy, for it was easy to 
see that they aggravated the trouble instead of help- 
ing it : he knew them to be as imprudent as they were 
hopeless, and when they culminated in the foolish 
assassination of Kotzebue (which is supposed to have 
prevented the adoption of a liberal constitution in 
Prussia) there was nothing he could do but avert his 
face in sorrow. Goethe always preferred temperate 
measures and a gradual progress in reform to sharp 
and violent revolutions ; but if he had been a con- 
servative in the usual meaning of the word, he would 
have belonged to the party of Wellington and Met- 
ternich, and would never have been reproached with 
partiality for Napoleon. On the occasion of the 
small rebellion of the students at Jena, he said that 
the students were right, but that the grand duke was 
also right and must be obeyed. 

I would compare Goethe in this respect with no 
less a person than President Lincoln. What do we 
honor Lincoln for so much as for his proclamation 
of freedom for the slaves .'* And yet the politicians 
who nominated him at Chicago hardly knew whether 
they were voting for an anti-slavery candidate or not. 



70 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

They knew only that they were voting for a man 
they could trust. Horace Greeley declined to vote 
for him because Lincoln had not distinctly committed 
himself on the slavery question. In his campaign 
against Douglas he opposed in a vigorous and decided 
manner the extension of slavery in the territories, 
especially when the attempt was made to force it on 
the people, as the government was doing in Kansas ; 
but in his Cooper Institute address he deprecated all 
legislation which might interfere with slavery where 
it was already established. Does any one doubt that 
Lincoln was at heart an anti-slavery man .-' The anti- 
slavery cause was part of the great humanitarian move- 
ment of the nineteenth century ; and a man who was 
so magnanimous and compassionate as Lincoln must 
certainly have felt this. He believed that the cause 
could be promoted better by his silence than by any- 
thing he could say. He waited his time until he 
should be able to deal with the evil in a more effec- 
tive manner than by words ; and the logic of events 
justified him. 

Such an opportunity never came to Goethe ; but 
we read in " Wilhelm Meister's Indenture of Ap- 
prenticeship," " They who see the half of a matter are 
apt to talk and say a great deal about it ; but he who 
sees the whole of it feels inclined to act, and speaks 
late or not at all." A wise sentence, and of universal 
application. 

Goethe did not, like Schiller, idealize the common 
people, but he always treated them in his writings 
with respect, and strove to represent the good that 
is in them as well as their peculiarities. There are 



GOETHE IN PRACTICAL POLITICS 7 1 

many instances of this, but especially the scene of 
Easter Sunday in the first part of "Faust." "Her- 
mann and Dorothea" is a pastoral of humble life 
that never has been matched. If the common peo- 
ple had not been interesting to Goethe he could not 
have written it. When a lady of rank complained 
that the characters in " Wilhelm Meister " did not 
belong to good society, Goethe replied in a verse : 

" I have sometimes been in society called good, 
from which I could not obtain an idea for the smallest 
poem." 

There is substantial proof in Eckermann's Conver- 
sations, and in other records, that Goethe maintained 
a lively interest in public affairs till the time of his 
death. 

In the fearful cyclones on the coast of Asia which 
occur during the changing of the monsoons, there 
is a central space where the storm does not rage. So 
in the little duchy of Weimar, while the wars of Na- 
poleon were raging all around, there was calmness 
and peace like that of the mighty intellect which has 
made it famous. It was the intellectual centre of 
Europe, 



THE POLITICS OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 

WE are not accustomed to think of T. W. 
Parsons as one of the foremost American 
poets, and yet in his translation from Dante, 
he has done the world a literary service second to 
none of them. There have been many translations 
hitherto of the great Italian epic, in English prose and 
verse, but Parsons' s is the only one that combines the 
essential qualities of the original ; its ease and grace 
of movement, its earnest tone and delicacy of expres- 
sion. Before reading Parsons's translation I had 
given up hope of enjoying any translation of Dante, 
except, perhaps, John Carlyle's prose-poetic version 
of the Inferno. Carey made the fatal mistake of at- 
tempting to render him into English blank verse; 
and Longfellow had already acquired a style too far 
removed from that of the Divina Commedia. The 
lack of any very definite style as a poet may have 
been to Mr. Parsons's advantage as a translator. 

No other modern language possesses equal advan- 
tages with the Italian for the formation of smooth- 
flowing verse ; and the secret of Dante's graceful 
measure resides chiefly in the cadence of his femi- 
nine rhymes, which fall over from one line to another 
like the spray of a fountain. This effect might have 
been reproduced in Spenser's time, but doubtfully, in 
the present contracted state of the English language. 



POLITICS OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 72, 

Parsons very wisely did not attempt to reproduce it, 
— though he has done so in places under favorable 
conditions ; but he has preserved the alternate rhymes 
of Dante's verse, which continue without a break to 
the end of each canto. He has thus secured a sense 
of movement, which, if it does not possess the noise- 
less gliding of Dante's spirits, nevertheless carries 
the reader along in a pleasant and unconstrained 
manner. In this we recognize its advantage over 
English blank verse, which is much better suited to 
the argument of the stage. Although Parsons's lines 
are commonly a syllable shorter than Dante's, he has 
rendered the first thirty-five verses of the Inferno 
into twenty-eight English verses. 

Considering the difficulty of the work, the transla- 
tion is remarkably smooth and well sustained. That 
it should be always equal to itself is more than we have 
the right to expect. Parsons's account of the revenge 
of Ugolino is one of his most fortunate passages, 
while he has treated the pure and simple story of 
Francesca's love with a circumlocution that requires 
too much for the imagination. That the Purgatorio 
remains unfinished is more to be regretted than that 
Parsons should not have attempted more than a few 
detached passages of the Paradiso. In his exile 
Dante was no longer equal to a description of true 
happiness. 

This rare book, however, needs to be published 
with explanatory notes. Dante appears to have had 
glimpses of his own literary immortality, and yet no 
other poet has written so distinctly and determinedly 
for his own time and people. He is perhaps so much 



74 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

the better for this ; but whether he is a better poet 
for his extensive scholarship may be considered doubt- 
ful. What the true poet needs, is not scholarship 
but a manifold experience, and it must be admitted 
that the scholarly character of Dante's work makes 
it more difficult for us to comprehend. 

To realize the full meaning and intention of the 
Divina Commedia, it is necessary to acquire some 
familiarity with the tenets of mediaeval Christianity, 
to possess a college graduate's knowledge of Greek 
mythology, and to be acquainted with the course of 
Italian politics during the thirteenth century. There 
is as little true philosophy in his epic as in Homer's 
Iliad. It indicates an author of wide observation and 
profound experience, but the scholastic metaphysics 
with which he has impeded the movement of his Pur- 
gatorio and Paradiso may well be left to the initiated. 
Dante was not a thinker like Abelard, but a poet par 
excellence. 

Of these requisites the last has been the least under- 
stood, even by Dante's most ardent admirers. His 
interference in politics has been looked upon as the 
great mistake of his life. It has been said that he 
placed his enemies in hell and his friends in purga- 
tory. It has been looked upon as a natural piece of 
vindictiveness that he should have placed his arch- 
enemy, Boniface VIII., in the third circle of Male- 
bo Ige. 

Without entering too far into this branch of the 
subject, we may quote the following sentence from 
one of the latest of his commentators : — 

" It is, however, not easy to decide what the prin- 



POLITICS OF THE D I VINA CO MM ED I A 75 

ciple is upon which he made his selection : some have 
thought that it was personal, and that he allowed 
himself to be guided throughout by motives of per- 
sonal liking or hatred." ^ 

Suspicion is the child of ignorance and bad judg- 
ment, Sound minds recognize one another ; and if 
there had not been a deep abiding sense of justice in 
Dante, he would never have become a world poet. 
All human beings are swayed more or less by per- 
sonal feeling, but a close examination of Dante's 
judgments proves that he was neither partial to his 
friends, nor unfairly invidious to his enemies and 
political opponents. The principle he evidently acted 
upon was that a person who had committed one car- 
dinal sin, like the simony of Clement V. or Jason's 
desertion of Hyf^sipyle, ought to be condemned to 
hell, no matter how virtuous he might be otherwise. 
He has placed a number of Ghibelines in the Inferno, 
with his instructor Brunetto Latini and his friend 
Jacopo Rusticucci. Manfred is placed in purgatory, 
to show that in spite of excommunication he is on 
the way to paradise. 

Guelph and Ghibeline are still ominous words. 
They represent the struggle between church and 
state in the middle ages, which raged so fiercely in 
Germany and Italy that other European nations were 
comparatively neglected by the priesthood ; and the 
reason for this was that it was a struggle also for 
national independence against national unity. Italy 
could have no central authority of its own, so long as 
the pope held possession of Rome. He could not be 

1 Scartazzini's Companion to Dante, trans, p. 429. 



^6 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

pope and king also ; and this fact created a demand 
for some supreme authority from the outside, which 
might constitute a final court of appeal for the diffi- 
culties arising between the different states ; and 
although the papal government disliked this, it was 
considered preferable to an Italian monarchy. The 
pope and the emperor were like a married couple 
who can neither live together nor live apart. 

A nation without a central government can only 
maintain its independence so long as external circum- 
stances favor this. Pope Adrian I. was obliged to 
call in Charlemagne to protect him against the Lom- 
bards ; and John XII. offered the imperial dignity to 
Otho I. on condition that he would depose the usurper 
Berengarius. The attacks of the Saracens on south- 
ern Italy, which once placed Rome itself in serious 
danger, were a perpetual annoyance, and both Ger- 
mans and Normans were called upon to suppress 
them. The Italian people were perfectly capable of 
defending themselves, but they lacked military organ- 
ization, and it was not for the interest of the papal 
government that they should acquire this ; and the 
gratitude of the popes to their deliverers gradually 
cooled after the danger was over. 

The terms Guelph and Ghibeline only originated 
when the masterly Waiblingen family came to the 
German throne, but the same parties existed before 
their time and long afterward. The Guelphs were 
the patriotic party who wished Italy to become inde- 
pendent ; and the Ghibelines were the party of law 
and order, who preferred paying a foreign tax to hav- 
ing continual rows with their neighbors. As a mat- 



POLITICS OF THE D I VINA COM MEDIA 77 

ter of course the large cities like Milan, Genoa, Flo- 
rence, and Bologna were Guelphic ; and the smaller 
states, such as Verona, Padua, Arezzo, Cremona, and 
Pisa, who were greatly afraid of their more powerful 
neighbors, were Ghibeline. Naturally, in the more 
powerful cities the opposition was Ghibeline, and in 
the smaller ones it was Guelph. In Florence the 
Neri were Guelph and the Bianchi Ghibeline, or 
allied with them. In Florence the Ghibeline party 
acquired the ascendency in 1260 ; for which event 
one of its streets was named the Via Ghiabellina. 

There is always a conflict external or internal in 
the nation, the city, or the individual ; but the man- 
ner in which we conduct ourselves in the struggle is 
more important than the object or occasion of it. 
The occasion is a variable, but our conduct is a func- 
tion of our lives. There was much useless bloodshed 
in the Guelph and Ghibeline wars, as there was in 
other countries during the middle ages, but in spite 
of this Italy prospered, improved, and became wealthy. 
There were varying successors on both sides ; but 
the three powerful Hohenstaufen monarchs, Freder- 
ick I., Henry VI., and Frederick II., coming in suc- 
cession gave a preponderating advantage to the Ghi- 
beline cause, and reduced the temporal authority of 
the pope almost to a nutshell. 

This was particularly the case during the reign of 
Frederick II., a ruler who united in himself the talents 
of Louis XIV. and Frederick the Great, without the 
weaknesses of either, — one of the most complete men 
of whom there is any record. At the age of eighteen 
he crossed the Alps in disguise (for the Swiss were 



78 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

hostile to him) in order to take possession of an em- 
pire which not only included modern Germany, but 
Austria proper, Bohemia, the Netherlands, Switzer- 
land, Lombardy, and the kingdom of Naples. For 
thirty-eight years he governed this vast domain as if 
by magic. He was terrible in war, but too wise to 
attempt conquests which he did not believe could be 
retained. He carried the sword in his left hand and 
the olive-branch in his right. He suppressed a rebel- 
lion of the Lombards with Napoleon-like rapidity and 
thoroughness ; but when obliged to go on a crusade 
in order to nullify the excommunication of the pope, 
he made peace with Carmel the Great, the successor 
of Saladin, and obtained from him larger concessions 
for the city of Jerusalem than previous crusaders had 
won by hard fighting. He founded a university, 
chartered free cities, and enacted laws to ameliorate 
the condition of the peasantry. Dr. Francis Lieber 
speaks of him as a man centuries in advance of his 
own age ; and Menzel says that the " lustre of his 
seven crowns was far surpassed by his intellectual 
gifts and graces." 

Against such a sovereign the pope had no weapons, 
spiritual or temporal, that were of any avail, — Fred- 
erick's son once captured the whole college of cardi- 
nals on their way from Avignon to Rome, — so the 
conclave of the Vatican came to the wicked determi- 
nation to assassinate the whole Hohenstaufen family.^ 
Frederick's favorite son Enzio, was captured by the 

1 We regret to find a strict moralist like John Stuart Mill defend- 
ing this course on the ground of necessity. The same reasoning 
would exculpate the murderers of Cavendish and Burke. 



POLITICS OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 79 

Guelphs at Bologna and put to death contrary to 
knightly customs and the right of belligerents. Fred- 
erick himself narrowly escaped poisoning, and died 
soon afterward in his fifty-seventh year. His son 
Conrad IV., and Conrad's brother Henry, were both 
poisoned by the priests. His last son, Manfred, was 
killed in battle, fighting against the Duke of Anjou, 
whom the pope had called into Italy for the purpose. ^ 
His beautiful wife died in prison, and his young chil- 
dren, brought up in ignorance, became beggars in the 
streets. Three years later Conrad V., who came to 
avenge Manfred's death, was beheaded at Naples. So 
ended the Hohenstaufens ; and in the history of the 
Church of Rome there is not a more hideous crime. 

When base methods are resorted to it commonly 
indicates a desperate condition of affairs. After the 
destruction of the noble Waiblingen family, the pope 
and his cardinals found they had only changed a Ger- 
man for a French master ; for the evil was inherent 
in the political situation. The execution of Conrad 
was avenged, as Carlyle says, by " Sicilian Vespers," 
in which the French were massacred, not only to a 
man, but to a woman. Pope Celestine was " induced 
to resign," by Charles of Anjou ; and his successor, 
the infamous Boniface, was so maltreated by Philip 
the Fair that he died in the fourth year of Dante's 
exile. Such a course of events could only serve to 
strengthen the Ghibelines in Italy. Many important 
Guelphs went over to them from the fear of a sacer- 
dotal despotism, and among these was the poet 
Dante. The succeeding pope, Clement V, favored 
the Ghibelines. 

1 In 1265, the same year that Dante was born. 



80 NAPOLEON AND MA CHI AVE LLI 

Such was the background upon which the Divina 
Commedia was written. In his youth, Dante was a 
soldier, and had fought against the Ghibehnes at 
Campaldino. He next became a poHtician, but his 
poetic sense of justice and devoted patriotism brought 
him into conflict with greater forces than those which 
he could wield. If it had not been for his exile we 
might never have read his poetry. 

It must be confessed that his scheme of morals is 
rather academic. According to modern standards, it 
would have been more just to have represented Fred- 
erick II. in purgatory, and Boniface VIII. in the 
lowest hell ; for in cold-blooded villainy Boniface was 
never surpassed by any other pope, unless it were 
Alexander Borgia. We find Frederick assigned to 
the circle of arch-heretics — which was simply taking 
his enemies' accusations for truth. It is evident that 
he was excommunicated for purely political reasons, 
and that his severe edicts against heresy were in- 
tended to counteract this. Dante may have known 
less about him than the historian Hailam did. The 
real heretic is he who refuses to believe the truth when 
it is placed before his eyes ; and Frederick was too 
enlightened to feel implicit faith in the superstitious 
dogmas of his time. 

Why Dante should have placed his friends, Teg- 
ghiaio Aldobrandi and Jacopo Rusticucci, in the In- 
ferno is not so clear ; it was probably for reasons 
known only to contemporaries : so also of his precep- 
tor Brunetto, — but they were evidently excellent 
men or Dante would not have found pleasure in rec- 
ognizing them. 



POLITICS OF THE DIVINA CO MM EDI A 8 1 

A still more pedantic instance of injustice is that 
of Pietro della Vigne, in canto xiii., 55, who is in- 
carcerated in the trunk of a tree for having commit- 
ted suicide. He had been minister of state to Fred- 
erick II., but was blinded and imprisoned on suspicion 
of having attempted to poison his master. Dante 
considered him innocent of this accusation, but never- 
theless consigned him to hell for taking his own life 
in prison. Contrariwise he exculpates Cato, who was 
the most pedantic of suicides. 

Dante's essay in praise of monarchy is readily ex- 
plained. He recognized the need of a national gov- 
ernment for Italy, and monarchy was the only form 
of centralization that he could understand. The time 
for federalism had not yet arrived. 

He was not the greatest of poets. He may have 
excelled Milton; but he is surpassed by Homer, 
Shakespeare, and Goethe, — perhaps also by Sopho- 
cles and ^schylus. Yet, we return to him continu- 
ally, and we are not depressed by the terrible scenes 
which he conjures up for us ; for they appear in an 
atmosphere of the tenderest pity, and the light which 
illumines them comes from the life eternal. The 
Diviiia Commedia is one of the watch-towers which 
mark the progress of civilization, and, like Homer's 
Iliad, it may still hold its place after the lingua Tos- 
cana has ceased to be spoken. 



MACHIAVELLI'S "PRINCE." 

MACHIAVELLI is one of the puzzles of me- 
diaeval history. When some notable person 
who has always appeared immaculate to the 
public eye, one who has been long distinguished for 
the performance of pious works and the utterance of 
patriotic sentiments, is discovered conniving at fraud, 
or caught in the perpetration of some criminal act 
himself, we are greatly shocked, it is true, but not alto- 
gether surprised ; for we know that such instances 
have not been uncommon before, that self-interest is 
an ever ready instructor of hypocrisy, and, if we are 
sufficiently honest with ourselves, we realize how near 
at times the tempter has been to each one of us. 
When, however, we read of a man upon whose per- 
sonal character there was never a stain, and who 
devoted his life to the service of his native city, 
who endured torture without complaint, and died in 
poverty without reproach ; and yet one who in his 
writings advocated the most cruel, cold-blooded, and 
atrocious principles, — of such a one what judgment 
are we to make .'' What are we to think of a states- 
man who advises us that " men must be either flat- 
tered or crushed ; for they will revenge themselves 
for small injuries, but for heavy ones they cannot .''" 
Such a piece of truculent cynicism leaves Diogenes 
and his tub centuries behind. 



MACHIAVELLPS ''PRINCE'' 83 

" The Prince " differs in this respect from the " His- 
tory of Florence." The latter work may, in the por- 
tion of it which comes closely to the author's own life, 
represent partisan and prejudiced views, but this can 
only be proved by a painstaking investigation of the 
subject. Otherwise the spirit that animates it would 
seem to be that pure love of exposition, which George 
Eliot has noticed as one of Machiavelli's distinctive 
traits. After a recent perusal I do not recollect a 
single passage in it which might be called cynical or 
even sarcastic, and the satire which we may occasion- 
ally meet with in it is of a most amiable and refresh- 
ing kind. Nowhere does he descend in manner or 
material from the dignity which belongs to historical 
composition, except in the fifth chapter of the eighth 
book, where he evidently makes game of Roberto da 
Rimini. He is always the friend of municipal inde- 
pendence, the only form of civil liberty possible in 
Italy during the Middle Ages, and always the admirer 
of healthy, vigorous political action, whether by princes 
or popular governments. In the conduct of affairs 
he considers sagacity the highest virtue and incap 
ability the worst of evils. 

This it is not difficult to perceive, though his usual 
style is one of judicial indifference. He never palli- 
ates the crimes of princes, nor excuses the sloth, 
negligence, and presumption which have often ac- 
companied the inheritance of titles and high offices. 
Visionary schemes of restoring an ideal past are to 
such a practical mind as Machiavelli's of all things 
the most abhorrent. Yet he speaks kindly of Stefano 
Poreari, who attempted to revolutionize Rome, after 



84 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

the fashion of Garibaldi and Mazzini, but was betrayed 
and put to death by the pope in 1452, " Though some 
may applaud his intentions," Machiavelli says, "yet 
he is accountable for a deficiency of understanding ; 
for such attempts, although they may appear glorious, 
are almost sure to be attended with ruin." In the 
same narrative he refers to the dissolute manners of 
the priesthood and the mischief which they occasioned 
among both nobles and commons. If he favors one 
form of government more than another, it is that 
spontaneous Periclean authority, conferred upon the 
Medici by the citizens of Florence from the time of 
Cosmo the Great to the unworthy son of Lorenzo, 
with whom it came unhappily to an end.^ It is a 
marvelous thing when a whole people with one accord 
intrust the best man among them with sole charge of 
their public affairs. It is something better than either 
democracy or monarchy, for it is the harmonious 
union of both. When the life of Lorenzo de' Medici 
was in danger from the conspiracy of Sixtus Fourth 
and the Pazzi, every Florentine citizen of any impor- 
tance whatever, says Machiavelli, waited upon him 
with the offer of their life and property in his defense. 
The interests of Florence and of the Medici would 
seem to have been identical. 

Macaulay, to whom much speaking gave readiness, 
but writing not much exactness, states as a " notori- 
ous" fact "that Machiavelli was, through life, a 
zealous republican;" but this is saying a great deal 
too much. The only support I can find for it is the 
internal evidence of the History, and the fact that he 

1 This was also Aristotle's opinion. Politics, iii. 13. 



MACHIAVELLFS ''PRINCE" 85 

was imprisoned and tortured by the Medici in 1 5 1 3 
on suspicion of being concerned in a conspiracy 
against them. The truth of this accusation will never 
be known, for no confession could be extorted from 
him ; but the fact that the conspiracy was formed 
only within a year after the dedication of his book to 
Lorenzo the younger, would, to those who place any 
faith in human nature, make it appear improbable. 
Nor is it likely that Machiavelli would give a decided 
opinion in favor of the republican form of govern- 
ment. He was a trained diplomat, nursed in the 
school of the Borgias, and ready to serve the state, 
whichever party happened to be in power. As a dip- 
lomat, he would certainly be prudent enough to pre- 
serve silence on so dangerous a subject. In truth, 
this appears to have been a pretty bold guess on 
Macaulay's part ; for in his commentaries on Livy, 
Machiavelli, after discussing the nature and special 
advantages in each case of the monarchical, aristo- 
cratic, and democratic forms of government, and 
explaining in the clearest manner how each has a 
peculiar weakness inherent in itself which has always 
led finally to its corruption and debasement, concludes 
at length that the most stable, efficient, and just gov- 
ernment will ultimately prove to be that which shall 
combine these three forms in nearly equal propor- 
tions. The German philosopher Hegel was of a 
similar opinion. According to him government ought 
to be composed of the ojie, the few, and the many ; 
who, each with well-defined powers, should mutually 
support and restrict one another. If the one should 
exceed his legitimate authority and attempt to become 



36 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

autocratic, the few and the many would combine to 
prevent this ; and so with each in turn. Now it hap- 
pens that this is very much the sort of government 
by which an united Italy is now being regenerated ; 
and it is a pity that Machiavelli should not know it ; 
but if he has gone to the place which most of his 
critics have assigned to him, it is not likely that 
he does. 

" The Prince " was written about ten years previous 
to the " History of Florence," and perhaps represents 
a different phase of the author's life. He does not at- 
tempt in it to found a system of political science, but 
only to discuss such problems as relate to the govern- 
ment of absolute monarchies and autocratic princi- 
palities. Of republican governments he has already 
treated in his essay on Livy. As a matter of fact, 
he does not concern himself with the affairs of large 
kingdoms, like France or England, but with the for- 
mation of the small dukedoms which were then being 
established in Italy. He does indeed contemplate 
the construction of a large central power, sufficiently 
strong to resist foreign invasion, but this is rather of 
the nature of a speculative afterthought. It is evi- 
dently the government of Florence he is thinking of. 
The scope of his treatise is narrow, and its details are 
petty ; broad, general views of political science do 
not enter into it. The suppression of crime, the ad- 
vancement of learning, the extension of trade, the 
amelioration of poverty, are subjects about which 
Machiavelli concerns himself very little. Political 
economy, which now in its arrogance threatens to 
cover our whole mental horizon, was then unknown. 



MACHIAVELLPS ''PRINCE'' 87 

The commerce of Italy was unbounded, and but for 
the frequent and devastating wars between the dif- 
ferent states, its prosperity would have been as great 
as that of the United States of America is now. The 
magnificent buildings erected in Italy during the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries surpass those of 
any other country. The great Cosmo provided for 
the material interests of Tuscany upon the same 
principles that he conducted the affairs of the Medici 
bank, and with equal success. No : the main argu- 
ment of " The Prince " is how to acquire political 
authority, and then how to maintain it ; the latter 
being a problem which it was constantly becoming 
more difficult to solve. When we consider the book 
from this point of view, and that it was written for 
the benefit of a youthful autocrat, upon whose caprices 
and immature judgment the welfare of Florence must 
inevitably depend, we have at least obtained a basis 
from which to judge fairly of its merits and defects. 
This Macaulay, who commences with the assumption 
that its doctrines were intended for " the fundamen- 
tal axioms of all political science," was quite unable 
to do. 

There is much of the tone of a preceptor running 
through the book. It is altogether too shrewd and 
knowing in its style, and perhaps that is one reason 
why it was not received by Lorenzo with more favor. 
Otherwise it must be confessed that he gives his in- 
tended pupil a good deal of sound and excellent 
advice. In the first place, a prince, he says, should 
not give himself up to a life of idle and luxurious 
enjoyment of his authority, not to speak of wasting 



S8 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

himself and his substance in dissipation ; but should 
make a specialty of those pursuits which invigorate 
the body and strengthen the mind. "A prince whose 
conduct is light, inconstant, pusillanimous, irresolute, 
and effeminate, is sure to be despised : these defects 
he ought to shun as he would so many rocks, and 
endeavor to display a character for courage, gravity, 
energy, and magnificence in all his actions." He 
should avoid committing any action which might tend 
to make him despicable or odious : and " nothing is 
so likely to render a prince odious, as the violation of 
the right of property and a disregard for the honor 
of married women." Even in those cases where he 
may be obliged to inflict the punishment of death, he 
should invariably proclaim the reason for it, so that 
his subjects may not feel that they are in danger of 
their lives from the caprices of a cruel tyrant. In 
regard to the confiscation of property, and attainder 
of blood for high treason, he has anticipated a plank 
in our own constitution. He shrewdly observes that 
people sooner forget the loss of their relatives than 
the loss of their property. (An angelic looking Chi- 
cago girl of ten years, when instructed concerning 
the Southern rebellion, said finally, " I should think 
it would be better for the South to have lost more 
men and less money.") But nothing infuriates men 
like the dishonor of their wives : a glance through 
history shows a number of monarchs who have upset 
themselves in this way. " A prince should earnestly 
endeavor to gain the reputation of kindness, clemency, 
piety, justice, and fidelity to his engagements." At 
the same time he should not carry these virtues so 



MACHIAVELLPS ''PRINCE'' 8g 

far as to seriously prejudice his own interests, and 
those of the state, — a plain truth which every pru- 
dent business man js aware of. It is more important 
that a prince should be feared than loved by his sub- 
jects ; but he should also cultivate their affections as 
far as may be consistent with, the preservation of his 
dignity ; and in misfortune he should rely on their 
good-will towards him, rather than foreign alliances 
which are likely ^ any moment to prove unstable. 
He should let hjl subjects know that he places confi- 
dence in them/ and rather take some personal risk 
than show an unreasonable distrust of them. " Nei- 
ther should he lend too ready an ear to terrifying 
tales which may be told him ; but should temper his 
mercy with prudence, in such a manner that too much 
confidence may not put him off his guard, nor cause- 
less jealousies make him insupportable." He should 
practise economy in times of prosperity and peace, in 
order to provide a full treasury for wars and adver- 
sity ; and should care little for being accounted par- 
simonious, since munificent expenditures must finally 
result in an increase of taxes and short-lived popular- 
ity. Above all things, however, the prince should 
give consideration to the military art, and make him- 
self in every way an accomplished soldier, so that he 
may lead his own army and defend himself and his 
people in person ; for thus would he be the more re- 
spected by them, and would have to depend no longer 
upon the treacherous condottiero of that time. Ma- 
chiavelli condemns the use of mercenary troops, and 
lays down the principle, with emphasis, that it is safer 
for a sovereign to instruct his people in the use of 



90 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI^j 

arms than to purposely keep them in ignorance there- 
of. Here the sun fairly shines through the clouds 
as he says, " There is no better fortress for a prince 
than the affection of his people. If he is hated by 
his subjects all other fortresses will be in vain, for 
when they fly to arms there will be no want of ene- 
mies without the walls to afford them assistance." 
Parliaments, "whose object is to watch over the 
security of the government and the liberties of the 
people," he considers among the wisest of institutions. 
The effect of these sage counsels on the reader is 
somewhat diminished by their being presented in the 
guise of self-interest rather than for any inherent 
value of their own ; yet they show what honest 
thought the man was capable of. Acting upon such 
precepts, the Hohenzollern family have risen to the 
highest position in Europe ; while from a contrary 
practice the Stuarts and Bourbons have gone down 
to nothing, or next to nothing. 

We in America have had very slight experience 
of monarchical government, and yet it is easy for us 
to see that the foregoing principles neither militate 
against humanity nor good sense ; but there are also 
other passages in "The Prince" of a widely different 
character. It is these which give the book its peculiar 
tone, and have obtained for it a celebrity much beyond 
that of better works on political science. They have 
proved to be hard problemsfor the stoutest intellects. 
Not only do they seem to be inhuman and atro- 
cious, but they are also uttered in a manner so easy 
and graceful as to add greatly to their effectiveness. 
Their perfect coldness makes us shiver, and in their 



MACHIAVELLPS ''PRINCE'' 9 1 

keen precision we seem to feel the blade of the heads- 
man's axe. They impress us in a few words like the 
last scene of Othello, or an account of the Lisbon 
earthquake. Lord Bacon shook his head over them 
and doubted if they were meant seriously. Frede- 
rick II. accepted it all in dead earnest, as he did 
everything, and while he was crown prince wrote a 
refutation of their doctrines. Carlyle calls "The 
Prince," " Machiavelli's little absurdity of a book." 

He begins by dividing principalities into two classes ; 
those which are inherited and those which may be 
acquired by conquest or revolution. To govern the 
former is not difficult, since the people, being accus- 
tomed to obedience, will make no objection to the 
wishes of their prince unless he becomes extremely 
unreasonable. In the latter, it is true, more care and 
judgment are required ; but " if the family of the 
prince who last ruled over it be extirpated," and 
the people are allowed to retain their ancient customs 
and manners, there need be little fear of insurrection 
or civil disturbance. If, however, a subjugated city 
or state has once revolted, it is best to destroy it, 
and colonize it with citizens from one's own country. 
" The Romans, to make sure of Capua, Carthage, and 
Numantia, destroyed them and did not lose them ; 
aud they were compelled at last to destroy several 
cities in Greece, in order to retain the country ; and 
doubtless that was the safest way, for otherwise who- 
ever becomes master of a free state and does not 
destroy it, may expect to be ruined by it himself." 
Napoleon III., however, in his " Life of Csesar," de- 
plores the destruction of Carthage, and gives the true 



92 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

cause for it, namely, that nations, like individuals, some- 
times lose their mental balance. Then, after speaking 
of a prince's behavior towards his own people, he says, 
" In short, it is always necessary to live with the same 
people ; but a prince has no occasion to continue the 
same set of nobles, whom he can at pleasure disgrace 
or honor, elevate or destroy." Caesar Borgia, having 
conquered the Romagna, proceeded to root out the 
old nobility of that province ; " and there were few 
that escaped him." He believes that a prince is no 
longer obliged to keep his faith or engagements with 
others when it has ceased to be his interest to do so, 
or when the conditions upon which his promises were 
given shall have materially changed. " I should be 
cautious," he says, " in inculcating such a precept if 
all men were good ; but as the generality of mankind 
are wicked, and ever ready to break their agreements, 
a prince should not pique himself in keeping his more 
scrupulously, especially as it is always easy to justify 
a breach of faith on his part." These translated ex- 
tracts and paraphrases, however, do not convey the 
same dramatic effect as the original do, separated 
from their natural surroundings. There are not many 
of them, and I think that the one which I first quoted, 
that "men should either be flattered or crushed," 
rather takes the lead of the rest. 

How then are we to account for this surprising 
contradiction .-' Does it consist in the nature of the 
man, or the nature of his subject, or in the nature of 
his times } Was it intentional or accidental } Had 
Machiavelli a hidden purpose in giving his work 
an appearance of heartless indifference to humanity. 



MACHIAVELLPS ''PRINCE" 93 

an aristocratic air of sang froid : or was he quite un- 
conscious of the sensation that it would produce ? 
Had the man a perverted moral vision ; or was he, 
like Walt Whitman', possessed of a familiar demon 
who put in a sentence occasionally to mar the per- 
fection of his pages ? Macaulay, whose essay is the 
popular source of information on this subject, finds 
an explanation in the fact that Machiavelli was an 
Italian, and that Italians are by mental construction 
given to wiles, treachery, and furtive homicide, to a 
degree which the Anglo-Saxon is fortunately exempt 
from. Especially at this time they were going through 
an historical process which made the cultivation of 
certain vices a public necessity. They had long since 
dispensed with the courage of the lion, and were now 
compelled to rely on the cunning of the fox. Since 
they could not crush their enemies with the strength 
of the boa, they were driven to make use of the 
venom of the cobra. Where an English gentleman 
smarting under a grievance would have challenged 
his aggressor to mortal combat, an Italian would have 
resorted to a hired assassin ; where the English yeo- 
man would strike his adversary with his fist, the 
Italian peasant would use a stiletto. As a conse- 
quence of this, acts that in one country would be con- 
sidered cowardly and base would be S,ccepted in the 
other as a matter of course : England would condone 
the youthful follies of Henry the Fifth, his cruelty, 
and his ruthless invasion of France, for the sake of his 
matchless valor and military skill. So would Italy 
forget the crimes and perfidy of Borgia, in admiration 
for the boldness and skill with which he surmounted 



94 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

all obstacles to his enormous ambition. Then he 
passes from history to fiction. Where an English 
audience, Macaulay says, would have little but com- 
miseration for the calamities which Othello brings 
upon himself through jealousy and credulity, an 
Italian audience would only feel contempt for the 
man who allowed himself to be duped by one to whom 
he had previously refused important favors. On the 
other hand, they would no doubt applaud lago's 
shrewdness and dexterity, — just as James Fisk, Jr., 
was formerly admired by many Americans, — though 
they could not approve of his methods. Machiavelli, 
when he calmly proposed the extirpation of a noble 
family, could not have imagined that posterity would 
be shocked by it. 

I have substituted Caesar Borgia in this argument 
for Francesco Sforza, who is Macaulay's example of 
a perfidious Italian, because Borgia is an example 
cited and approved of by Machiavelli. Sforza com- 
mitted some acts of treachery and a few crimes, but 
would pass muster anywhere for as good a man as the 
hero of Trafalgar, whom indeed he greatly resembles, 
both in his duplicity and his brilliant fighting quali- 
ties. He cannot, therefore, serve fairly as an illustra- 
tion of the case. Altogether this argument seems 
overwrought, and strained from the point. There is 
some truth in it, but not enough to cover the subject. 
It is undeniable that the Latin races, and particularly 
the Italians, have a different ideal of morality from the 
Teutonic races. They have special excellencies of 
their own, and also certain weaknesses. The repu- 
tation of the Italians for their power of dissimulation 



MACHIAVELLPS "PRINCE'' 95 

has been quite equal to that of the French for their 
lack of formal sincerity. It is true, also, assassina- 
tion, especially by poisoning, has been more frequent 
and horrifying in the annals of Italy than of any 
other Christian country. Yet do the crimes of Alex- 
ander VI. surpass those of Richard III. ; and are 
either to be accounted for on the ground of national 
differences .'' We know the poetic horror of Dante, 
and the eloquent rage of Savonarola for the flagrant 
corruption of the papacy. The proceedings of the 
Borgias were not without parallel in Italian history 
perhaps, but they were without parallel in their own 
age. What has made them famous but the horror 
which these excited, for they finally accomplished 
little except to ruin themselves and their whole 
family .? Their misdeeds were not looked upon with 
indifference ; and the popes who succeeded Alex- 
ander for the next half century were fairly good men. 
Neither does it appear that the treachery of Fran- 
cesco Sforza to the Venetians differs very much in 
kind from Nelson's sudden seizure of the Danish 
fleet in time of peace. Both were dictated by the 
law of self-preservation. The shrewd Francesco fore- 
saw that affairs would soon take such a turn that his 
interests and the Venetians would come into conflict. 
If he had not deserted them, they would have been 
forced to leave him in the lurch. He acted thus, not 
as an Italian especially, but as a general of hireling 
troops, and no better was to have been expected of 
him. Even if Lorenzo the Magnificent or Julius 11. 
had done the same, the case would barely have a na- 
tional significance ; but they were as a rule faithful 



96 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

to their engagements. Since the invasion of the 
Lombards, there has been no period of Itahan history 
which equals in horrors and atrocities the Wars of the 
Roses in England, or of the period of the Reforma- 
tion in France. 

Now if " The Prince " represented the current opin- 
ion of Italy in the sixteenth century, we should expect 
to find the same "moral obliquity," not only in Machia- 
velli's other writings, but in those of various authors 
of the same period. In the discourses on Livy, it is 
true there are two passages almost identical with those 
quoted from "The Prince," and — let us note this 
as a characteristic trait of the man — there is a ten- 
dency in it to vindicate the acts of the Roman con- 
querors when they carry matters with a high hand ; 
but he invariably excuses himself for doing so, and 
alleges such reasons for his determination, that even 
a strict moralist could not find them altogether 
groundless. The tone of the work is different, and 
the impression it leaves on the mind of the reader 
is much pleasanter than that of "The Prince." How 
Machiavelli's dramas can be brought into court on 
a question of moral obliquity it is difficult to under- 
stand. It would be as fair to hold Moli^re respon- 
sible for the character of Tartuffe, or Lessing for 
that of Marinelli. In regard to the history of Flor- 
ence, I lately made a series of references while read- 
ing it under various headings, such as "depravity," 
"evidences of a moral sense," " mistaken judgment," 
and many others. Now under the head of depravity 
there are no references to the " History," but there 
are nine or ten to "The Prince ;" while under evidences 



MACHIAVELLPS "PRINCE" 97 

of morality there are ten references to the " History " 
and five to "The Prince." Nor do I believe there can 
be found in the "History" a more pronounced instance 
of moral obliquity than the statement of Thiers that 
the combined losses of the Prussians and English 
at Waterloo exceeded by ten thousand killed and 
wounded those of the French ; or than some of 
Macaulay's own statements in regard to Lord Bacon, 
Frederick the Great, or in the essay we are now 
considering.^ Yet in this essay there are also bril- 
liant and valuable passages. In truth, what he says 
of Machiavelli would apply with some modification 
of tone to Macaulay himself. Qualities altogether 
dissimilar are united in him. We are charmed by 
the vigor of his writing, and repelled by the weak- 
ness of his generalizations. In one paragraph he 
gives us the clearest insight into the mechanism of 
political parties or dexterously unravels court in- 
trigues ; in the next he stumbles blindly over his 
subject, like an ambitious and self-sufficient under- 
graduate. He astonishes us with the variety and ex-| 
tent of his information, as well as by his lack of fixed' 
principles and a philosophical basis. He writes an 
essay on Queen Elizabeth and calls it " Burleigh and 
his Times ;" he writes an account of the causes which 
led to the French Revolution and names it " Mira- 

1 After commenting on " the difference between the Italians and 
their neighbors " (French, Spanish, and Greeks ?), he moralizes thus : 
" A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The 
evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion 
produces a pernicious effect on the vi'hole character. The former is 
a local malady, the latter a constitutional taint." This surpasses 
Mephistopheles' advice to the young student. 



98 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

beau." There is nothing to speak of about Burleigh 
or Mirabeau in either of them. In many passages 
he shows a fine sense of character, especially a clear 
understanding of human weaknesses ; as his artistic 
delineation of Charles the Second is a good witness. 
Against this we must place his uncharitable preju- 
dices against William Penn and the Quakers. He 
shows true penetration when he says that "a reform- 
ing age is always fertile to impostors ; " but what 
reckless political judgment it is to call Caesar Borgia 
the greatest practical statesman of his time. It would 
be difficult to improve on his criticism of Machia- 
velli's comedies, but his remarks on what he is pleased 
to call " the egotism of Petrarch " prove that he 
wholly misconceived the nature of egotism, and of 
subjective poetry as well. As a writer he is lively 
and interesting, but without grace or elegance of 
style. His talk is not like conversation in a parlor, 
but conversation on the sidewalk. Correct and up- 
right in his dealings with men, it is yet to be feared 
that his moral sense was a good deal blunted by the 
late dinners and fashionable society of his time. But 
this is a digression not unlike some of his own. 

As " The Prince " stands alone among Machia- 
velli's works for its ethical peculiarities, so is its 
author also without a counterpart among Italian 
writers of the best quality. There is at least only 
one other, a composer of squibs, epigrams, and pas- 
quinades, the Venetian scourge, Pietro Aretino, who 
resembles him at all in this respect ; but Aretino 
was notoriously immoral and unprincipled, a sort of 
literary Cartouche. Ah, it is idle to suppose that a 



MACHIAVELLPS ''PRINCE'' 99 

great and glorious civilization, such as flourished in 
Italy in the fifteenth century, could be based on 
habits of dissimulation, treachery, and cowardice. 
There can be no great art without courage and sin- 
cerity. How evident is the sincerity of Raphael ; and 
how renowned that of Michel Angelo. If these men 
had been alone in their day they might be considered 
accidental ; but they had hundreds of followers, thou- 
sands of appreciative admirers ; there were others 
also very nearly their equals. If they were excep- 
tional geniuses, it may be said that only exceptional 
conditions make such men possible. Genius is the 
gift of nature, but its development is the work of 
man : it. requires protection, patronage, and culture. 
It must be self-reliant, but it also has to depend upon 
others. In large part we are indebted for Michel 
Angelo to Lorenzo de' Medici, Pope Julius, and Pope 
Adrian. His most perfect work was done during the 
pontificate of Julius II., and Grimm, his biographer, 
considers that the mental influence of Julius (who 
according to Macaulay had an ill-regulated mind) was 
necessary for this. These statesmen must have 
shared largely in Michel Angelo's noble nature, as 
Pericles did in that of Sophocles and Phidias, or 
else they would have been repellent to him, and 
the relation would not have borne good fruit. It 
was Lorenzo who took him away from his father, 
and saved his lofty soul from being crushed out by 
parental stupidity. Paris is now the chief centre 
of the fine arts, but there a nature so susceptible 
as that of Raphael or Correggio would become per- 
verted in its youth, and inevitably go to ruin. There 



lOO NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

would not be sufficient moral health in the commu- 
nity to avert this. In America they would suffer 
equally from a lack of protection. Benvenuto Cellini, 
to whom Goethe paid the highest of all compliments 
by translating his memoirs into German, belonged to 
the lower middle class of Tuscany, was without social 
refinement and with little education. He was artist, 
soldier, musician ; worked hard, fought bravely, and 
enjoyed life in a hearty, sensible manner. He is not 
a scrupulous fellow, but bears malice towards none. 
He is the Fielding of Italian prose, and thoroughly 
English in his frankness, directness, and good humor ; 
and yet he is not an exotic, for the people whom he 
describes breathe the same fresh air and enjoy the 
same healthy life that he does. I think it must have 
been the perfect moral sanity of the man, and of his 
writing, for which Goethe liked him so well. 

To make a fair estimate of Italy in the year 1500, 
we must take into the account men like these, as 
well as the Borgias and Aretinos. The sincerity of 
an artist is perhaps the highest type of sincerity, for 
it consists in a mental attitude which cannot be for- 
mulated. It is to be hoped that the popular impres- 
sion, that the life of an artist is necessarily an effemi- 
nate and enervating one, has now pretty much gone 
out of fashion. There are many such, but they are 
never of a high rank. Neither are great artistic 
periods necessarily followed by a national decline, as 
we see now in the vigorous internal development of 
Germany. The fruit ripens and the leaves fall, but 
the tree, unless it is exposed to too severe a winter, 
will again put forth buds and blossoms in the spring. 



MACHIAVELLPS "PRINCE'' 10 1 

This is what happened in Italy during the seven- 
teenth century, though in a rather abortive manner ; 
for the eclectic school, founded as it was upon a 
vicious principle, contained many men of genius. 
There was no lack of courage, no lack of true manli- 
ness among Machiavelli's countrymen. Take, as an 
example, that Genoese mariner, the first to cross the 
Atlantic, whose name is the plaything of every 
schoolboy ; or that other Genoese who was the first 
admiral of his age. All the Medici were brave. Piero 
Capponi cowed the French king in the city hall of 
Florence, and Francesco Ferucci, whose death was 
the knell of Florentine liberty, was nowise inferior to 
the modern Garibaldi. The northern hirelings of 
Bourbon and Orange, who sacked Rome and reduced 
Florence, were very roughly handled afterwards by 
an army of Italians in the plains of Lombardy. 
Cellini himself helped to defend the Castle of St. 
Angelo against them. But the highest prize in this 
line must be awarded to Julius II., who took Caesar 
Borgia into his palace, and lived for weeks within 
striking distance of that human cobra, before having 
him shut up in a Spanish prison. Eighty years later 
the best general in the armies of Philip II. was an 
Italian ; and until the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury the Piccolomini, Montecuculi, Eugene of Savoy, 
and a score of lesser lights distinguished themselves 
in the service of Austria. It was not art which pre- 
cipitated the decline of Italy. Jesuitism, and the 
blood-stained gold of Mexico, which gave to the 
Spaniards an overpowering political importance, were 
the twin causes of its demoralization and disgrace. 



I02 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

Professor Reichert, when he commenced to investi- 
gate the venom of the rattlesnake, found, to his sur- 
prise, that instead of being a single uniform poison, 
it was composed of three separate and wholly distinct 
poisons. The processes of nature are not simple, as 
some of her admirers would have us believe, but in 
most cases very complicated ; and it is the business 
of man, acting in a rational manner, to bring order 
and simplicity out of the confusion about him. As 
it is in external nature, so it is also in the human 
mind. There is no more intricate study than meta- 
physics, and if we could investigate the mental 
methods of a saint, or of a country maiden, either 
would no doubt be found to have a somewhat com- 
posite character. So if we consider those sentences 
in Machiavelli's "Prince" which seem most obnoxious 
to us, and treat them according to the cautious and 
inquisitive principles of scientific research, perhaps 
we may find in them also that various different in- 
fluences have combined to produce a single effect. 
It will be recognized that every man receives at birth 
a certain mental bias which largely determines the 
future course of his life ; that his profession or occu- 
pation has also a modifying influence upon him, and 
that he is likely also to be prejudiced by the current 
beliefs and opinions of his time. When these three 
do not, in some measure, counteract one another, 
they cause a striking deflection from the normal 
curve of human perfection. 

In the first place, then, we notice that a slightly 
pessimistic tone pervades the whole treatise ; a lack 
of confidence in human nature. This is not uncom- 



MACHIAVELLFS "PRINCE" 103 

mon in political writings among men who have had 
an extensive experience in public affairs. Macaulay 
is by no means free from it; Metternich has been 
charged with it ; and if there is anything more pessi- 
mistic than J. Stuart Mill's essay on government one 
would like to hear of it. His fundamental axiom, that 
" one man if stronger than another will take from 
him whatever that other possesses and he desires," 
is worse than Machiavelli's proposition that "the 
generality of mankind are wicked and ever ready 
to break their word," because it denies the possi- 
bility of justice or generosity except from interested 
motives. How many notable statesmen besides Web- 
ster and Sumner and Beaconsfield have died gloomy 
and despondent at the condition of affairs which they 
were leaving. It says in the preamble to our Con- 
stitution, " in order to form a more perfect union, es-.^ 
tablish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide 
for the common defense, promote the general wel- 
fare, etc.," and the main object of government could 
hardly be stated better ; but the largest share of a 
statesman's work is of a very different kind. He 
must keep these general principles in mind, like a 
sort of north star to guide his course by, but it is no 
wonder that he often loses sight of them. In poli- 
tics the fiercest passions of mankind come into play, 
scarcely less fierce than those which are engendered 
by war. That the actions of men are wholly 
prompted by self-interest is the shallowest sophistry ; 
but they are largely so prompted, and it is necessary 
and right that they should be. All the different in- 
terests of the community meet in the political centre, 



104 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

each represented by talented and able men, and each 
pushing its claim to the utmost, regardless of all 
others, and of the general welfare. This is the side 
of human nature with which the statesman comes into 
daily contact. To decide between different interests, 
and to curb, control, and direct the energy with which 
they are forced upon him is often cruel hard work 
for the most high-minded administrator ; not unfre- 
quently more than he is able to accomplish. Which- 
ever way he may look he sees nothing but self-inter- 
est in human form, and it is no wonder if at last he 
is driven to the conclusion that egotism is the rule 
and patriotism the exception, — that it is only "the 
remnant " that can be depended upon. Besides the 
honest partisans who press their side issues with 
the zeal of fanaticism, the patriot politician is also 
obliged to deal with a class of people who are only 
more virtuous than common criminals in that they 
are more prudent, who take to intrigue, dissimula- 
tion, and the construction of mischief as naturally 
as cold-blooded animals take to the water. Such 
men may not be without a certain lukewarm regard 
for their native country, but they do not let that in- 
terfere with the advancement of their own fortunes 
by the most unscrupulous means, and they find, in 
the confusion and strain of political life, a fruitful 
field for the cultivation of their peculiar talents. 
There are enough of this sort to be found now in 
America, but in the Middle Ages, when crime was 
more frequently avenged than punished, they were 
much more bold and numerous. He who has had 
experience of them cannot be altogether blamed for 



MACHIAVELLPS "PRINCE" 105 

exclaiming sometimes with Frederick II., " Of what 
infernal stuff is human nature made?" 

But in Machiavelli's time politics were at their 
very worst. It was the period of transition in Eu- 
rope from the polity of the Middle Ages to that of 
modern times, and the receding tide of the past was 
mingled in a surging charybdis with the advancing 
flood of a new era. Everywhere in France, Spain, Italy, 
and Austria, local independence was being crushed 
out, to be replaced by a despotic centralization with 
the divine right of kings very near at hand. During 
the last five centuries Italian civilization had been 
wrought out in a conflict between the pope and the 
German emperor. In 951 Otho I., having been 
called into the country by Pope John XII, to restore 
order and drive out the Saracens, was invested with 
the imperial dignity. This he happily accomplished, 
and under his protection Italy started forth into new 
life and prosperity ; but from this time the German 
emperors considered themselves entitled to superin- 
tend Italian affairs, and by the customs of the feudal 
period they certainly had the right to do so. This, 
however, was not agreeable to the Italians, since no 
people will submit to being controlled by a foreign 
power if they can possibly prevent it ; and hence 
arose the most peculiar system of politics of which 
there is any record. The pope, in order to maintain 
himself amongst the small Italian principalities, was 
obliged to reinforce his temporal power and ma- 
terial means. This brought him into immediate 
collision with the emperor on questions of authority ; 
for as the highest spiritual potentate he could yield 



I06 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

to no one else in dignity of position. Legally his 
temporal and spiritual powers might be distinguished, 
but with the public it was impossible. His mate- 
rial means were insignificant compared with the em- 
peror's, but his spiritual influence over the minds of 
men was enormous. This grew continually greater, 
as the crusades stirred up religious enthusiasm, until it 
overtopped everything. Alexander or Timour never 
encountered such a terrible adversary : it was like 
fighting with an invisible enemy. He could unite 
the scattered states of Italy against the emperor, and 
if that were not enough call in the king of France 
to his aid. Then, if still defeated, he would have re- 
course to the terrors of excommunication. In this 
manner the pope finally gained complete ascendency, 
utterly destroying the magnificent Hohenstaufen 
race, to the great injury of both Germany and Italy. 
It was a policy like that of the viper towards its 
benefactor, but had for its excuse the necessity of 
national independence, without which there can be no 
right development of a people. 

Italian unity, however, did not exist, and it was not 
for the pope's interest that it should exist. He could 
not be the chief executive of the country any more 
than an English sovereign can be a leader in the 
House of Commons. All Christendom would have 
cried out against it. The emperor especially would 
have come down upon it like the wolf on the 
fold. At the same time a king of Italy was some- 
thing which the supreme pontiff dreaded more even 
than the emperor, who sometimes disappeared beyond 
the Alps for several years together. Neither did the 



MACHIAVELLPS "PRINCE" ' 107 

small Italian states desire that the papacy should 
become more powerful than any one of themselves. 
Veneration for the papal office was always greatest 
at great distances, — as commonly happens, — and ' 
the governments of Milan, Venice, Florence, Bologna, 
and the rest were jealous of the papacy and of one 
another. Both the pope and the emperor encouraged 
the foundation of free cities as a check upon the in- 
fluence of the lesser princes ; and each city had its 
local politics of two inevitable parties, one of which 
was supported in course of time by the emperor and 
the other necessarily by the pope. The violence 
with which Italy was racked during the Middle Ages 
by the factions of Guelph and Ghibeline is thus ex- 
plained. It is bad enough when a city possesses 
within itself, as the Italian cities did, the power of 
banishment and death for political offenses ; but here, ,., 
weighted on one side by the authority of the pope 
and on the other by power of the emperor, civil dis- / 
sensions were raised to a magnitude far beyond their! 
true importance. The fires of party passion were 
kept up with an oxy-hydrogen blowpipe. 

This curious political fabric was particularly well 
adapted to the fertile ingenuity and versatility of 
the Italian mind. To form a league against the 
emperor, and afterwards to set the most powerful 
members of it fighting amongst themselves, was the 
pope's chief business. Alliances were formed and 
dissolved again like smoke. If a state or city became 
more prosperous and powerful than its neighbors, it 
was certain to be attacked by them in concert, and 
when upon the point of being crushed by superior 



I08 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

odds it was equally sure to be preserved by having its 
cause espoused by a seceding minority of its adver- 
saries. Or at the last moment the emperor suddenly 
appeared out of the Brenner Pass, and turned the 
tables for everybody. The free cities made war on 
the country nobility, and compelled them to live in- 
side of their walls ; and the nobles in revenge con- 
spired together against the liberty of the cities. No 
other country has ever been cursed with such politics. 
Ancient Greece comes nearest to it, and next Ger- 
many after the close of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. 
Yet these three and the Netherlands are the only 
countries in which the arts of design have reached a 
high degree of perfection ; and there may be some 
mysterious connection between that fact and the ab- 
sence of a centralized government. The artist, at 
any rate, would not suffer from the benumbing influ- 
ence of the fashions in a great metropolis. Whoever 
the persons are who set the fashions they are not 
trained to a keen perception of the beautiful. 

Certainly in Italian politics sincerity, fidelity, dis- 
interestedness, would have been as much out of place 
as they might be now among the stock gamblers of 
Wall Street. Intrigue, dissimulation, and treachery 
were an absolute necessity in such an element. A 
high-minded statesman like Hildebrand, who reformed 
the Catholic Church, might object to making use of 
these methods, and probably did so as rarely as pos- 
sible ; but to avoid them altogether was to be left 
stranded in the shoals. The fear of treachery became 
the father of treachery. The enemy of yesterday 
was the friend of to-day and the traitor of to-morrow. 



MACHIAVELLPS "PRINCE'' 109 

Machiavelli says in his " History of Florence " (b. i. 6) : 
" Henry of Luxemburg had been elected emperor, 
and came to Rome for his coronation (131 5 a. d.), 
although the pope was not there. His coming oc- 
casioned great excitement in Lombardy ; for he sent 
all the banished to their homes, whether they were 
Guelphs or Ghibelines ; and in consequence of this, 
one faction endeavoring to drive out the other, the 
whole province was filled with war and confusion ; 
nor could the emperor with all his endeavors abate 
its fury." This shows conclusively how hopeless it 
sometimes is in politics to attempt what is abstractly 
right. 

This was the profession to which Machiavelli was 
trained. The principles upon which Italian states- 
men had acted for centuries were accepted by him as 
a matter of course. This explains, I think, the grace- 
ful sang-froid with which he sets them forth. Had 
he possessed more of Dante's ethical quality, or Bar- 
barossa's downright sense of justice, he would prob- 
ably have chosen a different profession, and left the 
affairs of state to others. We can be thankful that 
it was not so ; that he could serve his native city well 
and bravely at a time when trustworthy men were 
fortunately still in request, and that he could bring 
the light of practical experience to bear on his histori- 
cal studies. But this personal bias forms another ele- 
ment in the alembic of "The Prince."- The portrait 
of him which has been preserved to us gives the im- 
pression of a small, erect, determined-looking man, 
with an expression on the face which reminds one 
slightly of the St. George of Donatello : a man ap- 



1 1 NAP OLE ON A ND MA CHI A VELLI 

parently of the nervous-bilious temperament, inclined 
to look on the dark side and calculate for the worst ; 
a resolute, strong-headed fellow, self-contained, who 
might go through life without asking or giving sympa- 
thy. The rather small head, about the size of Byron's, 
has a compressed look as if there were strong forces 
within ; the short, stout nose may perhaps indicate 
obstinacy ; and the eyes are steady, inscrutable, un- 
flinching, in their gaze. It certainly is not a bad face, 
but neither is it an attractive one. There is no 
aspect of humanity, benevolence, or compassion in 
it — least of all a look of spirituality. The man was 
a realist in the most limited sense of the word. I 
feel as if his shell was harder than that of other 
people. It is not a noble physiognomy. He was 
neither an Aristides the Just nor a Henry IV. of 
France ; neither high-minded nor great-hearted ; but 
most like that keen, quick-witted, inflexible Frederick 
of Prussia, " the steel-bright soul," as Carlyle calls 
him. There is ample evidence of his realistic nar- 
rowness in a letter written on the eighth of May, 
1497, describing to a friend in Rome one of the last 
of Savonarola's discourses in public before the coun- 
ter-revolution which destroyed him, Machiavelli be- 
longed to the party opposed to Savonarola, which, it 
may be said, contained every person of sound judg- 
ment in Florence, as well as all the profligate. His 
practical good sense made clear to him how dangerous 
to the public the daring moral absolutism of this elo- 
quent monk might become ; but beyond that he could 
see nothing. Of the purity of Savonarola's motives, 
of the sublime religious elevation of his mind, which 



MACHIAVELLFS "PRINCE" III 

SO charmed Michel Angelo and even fascinated Lo- 
renzo dei Medici, Machiavelli had no conception. He 
even believed that Savonarola's enthusiasm was 
wholly a trick of rhetoric to inflame the minds of 
the multitude, and secure himself in his position of 
authority by undermining that of other influential 
citizens. After an account of the discourse, as un- 
friendly as possible, Machiavelli finishes thus : " And 
he [Savonarola] has turned all his fury against the 
pope and his emissaries, terming him, as he does, the 
vilest of men ; it is thus that he veers from point to 
point, to paint and color his fraud and cunning." 
Now it was quite true that the pope Alexander Bor- 
gia was one of the vilest of men ; and if Machiavelli 
had possessed spiritual insight he never would have 
written a book like " The Prince." 

Machiavelli was at this time in his twenty-ninth 
year. Five years later he was sent by the Floren- 
tine government as ambassador to Caesar Borgia, who 
was then at the height of his power. The party 
which had accomplished the downfall of Savonarola 
naturally became the ally of Alexander, and of his 
son ; and their opposition to the return of the Medici 
was another good reason for it. Caesar himself was 
very much such a man as Aaron Burr, of brilliant intel- 
lect but of a coarse and ordinary nature. Nature had 
lavished every bounty on him, excepting her best, 
mental qiiality. He was born a prince, but had the 
soul of a bull-fighter ; the statue was of heroic mould, 
but its material was dross. There is no human com- 
bination more dangerous to the man himself as well 
as others ; for it requires penetration, a sense of real- 



112 NA POLE ON AND MA CHI A VELLI 

ity, to see the man as he actually is. These natural 
impostors draw ambitious young men and giddy 
women about them, as a magnet draws iron filings. 
Machiavelli understood diplomacy too well to be 
overreached by Caesar, but he was evidently fasci- 
nated by him. It is surprising that he should have 
been ; but the numerous passages in " The Prince " in 
which he illustrates his theme by references to the 
policy of Caesar Borgia, and even the exceptional 
tone of some of them, leave no doubt of it. He 
even satisfied himself that Caesar was acting from 
patriotic motives, that his severe measures were 
needed for the public good. " Caesar Borgia," he 
says, " was accounted cruel ; but it was to that cru- 
elty he was indebted for reuniting Romagna to his 
other states, and establishing there the peace and 
tranquillity which it so much required." One would 
think it had been better to have taken his illustrations 
from the career of Julius II. There must have been 
something in Caesar's slashing methods peculiarly at- 
tractive to Machiavelli's mind. 

It is just in this that Borgia made his mistake in 
practice, and Machiavelli in theory. There have been 
occasions in the world's history, and there may be 
again, when the violation of a treaty, or the taking of 
human life without form of law, has been necessary 
and justifiable; exceptional cases for which no rule 
would apply. That any system or code of politics, 
however, could be based upon such principles and 
bring benefit to mankind, is an error similar to that 
of Ignatius Loyola. Machiavelli indeed anticipated 
Loyola ; and in both cases it was largely the influ- 



MACHIAVELLrS ''PRINCE'' II3 

ence of their different professions. What the Jesu- 
its are to be blamed for is not the doctrine that the 
end justifies the means, \y\x\.for making use of means 
which the end could 7iotjiLStify. For in most cases 
it is only the end which does justify the means. 
What, for instance, justifies the wholesale slaughter 
of cattle and sheep except our use of them as food ? 
What justifies killing our enemies in war, unless it be 
that we preserve the nation by doing so ? What can 
justify the small deceptions we practice upon children 
but the necessity of preserving them from knowledge 
which would be a certain injury to them ? Indeed, if 
we consider it well, what justifies the use we make 
of our time in this world but those worthy objects to 
which we devote it, — and it is to be feared that 
much of it is spent in a way which will never be jus- 
tified. There is no absolute standard of morality, 
and those who try to live by one do much harm to 
themselves and often a good deal to other people. 
Even hypocrisy, the most contemptible of vices, is 
sometimes a virtue. There is no standard, but an 
ideal of morality, to which we strive to conform as 
much as possible ; and those who have lived the noblest 
lives are aware how difficult that is. The captain of 
a sailing vessel wishes to make a certain port in the 
shortest time, but he cannot sail always straight 
towards it. He has to suit himself to every wind 
that blows ; to tack here and there ; to lie to in se- 
vere storms, or even to go wholly out of his course 
for the chance of obtaining more favorable breezes. 
In like manner are we obliged to steer our course 
over the eternal deep, sacrificing to adverse winds 



114 NAPOLEON AND MA CHI A VELLI 

much or little according to the force with which they 
blow. In a recent publication the lives of Long- 
fellow and Goethe were compared together, much to 
the advantage of the former ; but it would have been 
as just to compare a summer excursion to the Azores 
with the circumnavigation of the globe. There is a 
point, however, beyond which the sacrifice of means 
to ends should never pass. Whenever one nearly 
balances the other, whenever the gain and loss ap- 
proach to an equality, and this fact continually repeats 
itself, we may know that our course is no longer upon 
the high seas, but towards some frozen and unnaviga- 
ble northwest passage, — that the voyage we pro- 
posed has proved to be impossible. 

Such was the condition both of the Catholic Church 
and of Italian politics at the commencement of the 
sixteenth century. Each had become so bad that a 
violent revolution alone could save it. Machiavelli 
saw this plainly in the case of the papacy, but was 
blind to it in his own profession. In his " Essay on 
Livy " he blames the pope and cardinals for their evil 
practices and for having caused the disintegration of 
Italy. With every political structure there comes a 
time when it ceases to respond sufficiently to the re- 
quirements for which it was instituted ; and then, 
unless it contains within itself the germs of a new 
development, its end is near. 

The spiritual authority of the pope, which had 
served but poorly to maintain cohesion among the 
states of Italy even at its height, had now declined 
to almost nothing. What had been originally a badly 
constructed edifice was now undermined and totter- 



MACHIAVELLPS ''PRINCE" II5 

ing to its fall. No human power could save it : and 
with it must go all that was beautiful and great in 
Italian life. A political vacuum was being formed 
again in that devoted country after a thousand years ; 
the Frenchman and Spaniard were ready to rush in. 
Who can blame Machiavelli for hoping against what 
was hopeless, and dreaming of desperate measures 
to save that which was doomed } If Florence could no 
longer preserve its independence by the wisdom and 
valor of its first citizens, craft and dissimulation 
could not help it long. If Italy could only be reformed 
by extirpating the country nobility, reformation had 
come too late. The sacrifice of means had become 
equal to the end in view : the day of retribution was 
at hand. Machiavelli did not, or would not, perceive 
this, but a certain monk in Wittenberg knew it only 
too well, and with courage equal to his insight struck 
the blow which has divided Europe ever since. 

It was the lack of Italian unity, rather than the 
inherent weakness of the Italian character, which 
precipitated the rapid decline of the following cen- 
tury. It was the Church of Rome which prevented 
this unity. For the truth of this there could be no 
better witness — if witness were needed to so plain 
a proposition — than Machiavelli himself. In the 
discourses on Livy, book first and chapter twelfth, he 
says : " We Italians then owe to the Church of Rome 
and to her priests our having become irreligious and 
bad ; but we owe her a still greater debt, and one 
that will be the cause of our ruin, namely, that the 
church has kept and still keeps our country divided." 
Presumably it was for this plain exposure that his 



1 1 6 NAPOLEON A ND MA CHI A VELLI 

writings were condemned by the Council of Trent, 
and anathematized by several following popes. Car- 
dinal Pole, who was the first to exclaim against the 
atrocious doctrines in "The Prince," and who after- 
wards helped to promote the human conflagrations at 
Smithfield, may have had a similar reason at heart. It 
is well to note in this connection that, during the long 
struggle between the pope and the emperor, the 
bishops in the large cities of northern Italy were 
nearly always to be found on the side of the latter ; 
a fact which the historian Hallam finds himself quite 
unable to account for, as he is unable to account for 
the lack of concerted action in Italian politics, except 
upon the ground of "dark, long-cherished hatreds, and 
that implacable bitterness which, at least in former 
ages, distinguished the private manners of Italy," 
But such passions always come into play when a peo- 
ple is divided into small independent communities. 
Petty local jealousies strike root and grow to great 
dimensions, unless controlled by the stern mandate 
of a higher authority. The Lombard cities preferred 
to dissipate their wealth in fighting with one another 
than to pay a light tribute to the Hohenstaufens. 

Lastly, we ought to remember that "The Prince " 
was written for a special object. It was not pub- 
lished until after Machiavelli's death, and possibly 
was not intended by him for publication. The char- 
acter of the man to whom it was dedicated is also an 
element in the problem, but of that unhappily we 
know little. We have his statue by Michel Angelo, 
an elegant but muscular figure with a long, sinewy 
neck and a head of the meanest dimensions. If the 



MACHIAVELLPS ''PRINCE" I17 

face expresses anything, it is insensibility to danger. 
There is no trace upon it of mental or moral endow- 
ment. Perhaps it is not a good likeness, but it has 
certainly not been idealized. The remark of the 
sculptor that in one hundred years no one would care 
how those Medici looked, that is, Lorenzo II. and 
Juliano, has a wide significance. It seems likely 
there was little that could be said of him. There 
are certain men of sordid nature to whom, though 
not vicious themselves, all talk of virtue, morality, 
goodness, and especially reform, is instinctively hate- 
ful. They dislike being made conscious of their de- 
ficiency in these attributes, which they find it trouble- 
some to imitate. Lorenzo may have been one of this 
sort. If he was, it would readily explain the tone of 
guarded concession to morality which appears at inter- 
vals in "The Prince," as, for instance, " It is not ne- 
cessary, however, for a prince to possess all the good 
qualities I have enumerated, but it is indispensable 
that he should appear to have them." Counseling a 
narrow and dull-witted chief magistrate, whether he 
be prince or president, must be somewhat like driv- 
ing a pig to market. Machiavelli had been too long 
in politics to be able to keep out of them, for no 
other human occupation is so absorbing. One of his 
cardinal maxims is that a statesman must watch the 
changes of his time and suit himself to them. He 
saw that the Medici were carrying all before them 
in Rome, and that his only chance hereafter for bene- 
fiting himself or his country must come through 
their hands. Let those blame him who are without 
reproach themselves. 



1 18 NAPOLEON AND MA CHI A VELLI ' 

" The Prince," after all that we may say of it, remains 
substantially a picture of the politics of those days. 
Machiavelli approved of dissimulation under certain 
circumstances, but he himself has told us the truth. 
Like Shakspere, he spoke out his mind with no re- 
servation. What a revelation of human nature is 
Henry VI. or Richard III. ! The poet has given us 
in dramatic form what Machiavelli says in plain 
prose. In these plays we watch the extirpation of 
the Plantagenet family as it proceeds from one branch 
to another. Was it not the last of them, the Coun- 
tess of Salisbury, who was put to death for that rea- 
son by Henry VIII, } The veneration for hereditary 
right during the Middle Ages was so strong that it 
cannot be doubted such acts were sometimes neces- 
sary for the public good. Fortunately, they are so 
no longer ; but we can be grateful both to the poet 
and the historian, that they saw the life before them 
without illusions, that they comprehended it clearly, 
and that they concealed nothing of it from us. Such 
a past seems more real than the present. A faithful 
account of our politics now would not wear so fero- 
cious an aspect, but it might not be much pleasanter to 
contemplate, and quite as starthng to those who 
dream that the millennium is close at hand. The 
tricks of lobbyists, the artifices to win voters, the 
clap-trap speeches, the boundless misrepresentations ; 
the use of calumny in political canvasses, — the pot 
calling the kettle black again ; dreary congressional 
debates which end in nothing and were intended 
mainly to end in nothing ; patriotic men, after vainly 
endeavoring to accomplish something, defeated and 



MACHIAVELLPS ''PRINCE" IIQ 

driven into retirement ; coarse flattery of the public, — 
all this forms a spectacle more instructive than edi- 
fying. Tennyson was not far wrong when he called 
the last general election in England " a popular tor- 
rent of lies upon lies." What is at first a slight dis- 
tortion, or exaggeration of facts, soon becomes a 
mental habit, and in course of time neither orator 
nor audience can distinguish longer what is real from 
what is imaginary. In this manner political aspir- 
ants may attain the objects of their ambition, but 
they lose by it that practical good sense which is 
necessary for the conduct of affairs. The perusal of 
Machiavelli's "Prince" might instruct them in the 
awful seriousness of political responsibility, even if 
statesmen are no longer in danger of losing their 
heads for it. 



DANTE'S POLITICAL ALLEGORY 

DANTE evidently intended to illustrate his own 
views in regard to the politics of his time by 
the celebrated enigma in Purgatorio xxxii. 

To describe this briefly in its main features : — he has 
placed a triumphal car, drawn by a griffon, beneath a 
tree loaded with flowers and fruit ; an eagle comes down 
crashing through the branches of the tree, and strikes 
the car, making it rock from side to side, but without 
upsetting it; then a fox comes, lean and hungry, who 
takes possession of the car, but is driven away by the 
reproof of Beatrice ; then the eagle swoops down again, 
leaving the car covered with its feathers ; a dragon comes 
out of the earth and rips up the floor of the car with its 
barbed tail. Then the car, covered with feathers, puts 
forth seven heads, with horns like beasts, at the four 
sides. Next comes a giant in company with a harlot ; 
the former plucking the leaves from the tree, and the lat- 
ter seating herself in the car ; but when the harlot turns 
her eyes on Dante, the giant flogs her unmercifully, and 
drives the equipage into a forest out of sight. 

There have been numberless interpretations of this 
allegory ; but Dugdale, the English prose translator of 
the Purgatorio, sums up the opinion of previous com- 
mentators as follows : — 

The tree is intended to represent Christ; and its flow- 
ers are the foretaste of his glory. The triumphal car 
represents the Christian Church ; the descent of the eagle 
into the tree, the persecution by the Roman emperors ; 



1 22 NAPOLEON AND MA CHI A VELLI 

the fox is heresy ; the second descent of the eagle, with 
the loss of his feathers, represents the benefits conferred 
b}^ Constantine. The dragon is supposed to be either 
the Devil or Mahomet ; and the seven heads are sup- 
posed by some to represent the seven deadly sins, and 
by others, the seven sacraments. (Take your choice.) 
The giant is evidently the king of France, and the harlot 
represents the prostitution of the church to personal ends. 
The disappearance in the woods signifies the transfer- 
ence of the Holy See to Avignon. Beatrice represents 
theology. 

Now, it is possible that Dante intended by this to re- 
present the history of the church in allegorical form, but 
his treatment is much too meagre for such a large subject. 
Is it not more likely that he was minded to symbolize 
the condition of the Church of Rome in his own time'.'' 
Looked at in this manner all the figures unite to form a 
perfect whole. The tree cannot represent Christ and his 
heavenly triumph, for Dante expressly states in the next 
canto that it is the same tree from which Eve plucked the 
forbidden fruit : canto xxxiii., 60. Inferentially it may 
be intended for Christianity itself, by which the true 
knowledge of good and evil was supposed to have been 
first divulged. 

Neither is it likely that Dante would have made use of 
a triumphal car as a symbol for the Christian Church. 
The expression is lacking in humility. We may suppose, 
therefore, that Dante intended it for the temporal power 
of the popes, which, when properly applied and directed 
to Christian teaching and good works, caused the tree to 
flourish, but when this was allied with the powers of dark- 
ness its flowers drooped and its leaves withered. 

The first descent of the eagle is not exactly a fair sym- 
bol for the persecutions of the early Christians, for the 



DANTE'S POLITICAL ALLEGORY 1 23 

church withstood them like a rock. On the contrary, it 
serves remarkably well for the reign of Frederick II., 
who repeatedly shook the papal government to its foun- 
dations, without, however, quite carrying his point. 

There is a significant allusion to the second descent of 
the eagle, xxxii., 138, Forse con intenzione casta e benigna, 
which would not apply to Constantine, the shrewd poli- 
tician, but is quite what we should expect from Dante con- 
cerning the chivalrous Henry VII,, for whom it was no 
doubt intended. 

Here, as in the first canto of the Inferno, the fox is 
probably intended for heresy ; but it is a symbol that 
would be better suited to skepticism, which penetrates 
everywhere but finds no permanent abiding-place. 

Dugdale supposes that Beatrice represented theology ; 
and Scartazzini speaks of her as religious science, which 
comes to the same purpose ; but she appears everywhere 
as the antagonist of science. Does she not rather repre- 
sent religious faith, pure and simple, — man's recognition 
of the divine love ? Dante finds her seated under the tree 
of Christianity. 

I believe there is no diiference of opinion in regard to 
the meaning of the giant, the harlot, and the disappear- 
ance of the strangely decorated car ; but what does the 
griffon stand for ? Dante speaks of him as a creature of 
"twofold nature." May not this refer to the nature of 
mankind in general, which is at once spiritual and car- 
nivorous ? 

In the last canto of the Purgatorio, Beatrice propounds 
a prophecy in the form of a riddle, to the effect that " a 
messenger from God," D U X,^ will come to slay the giant 
and his companion. This has been interpreted as refer- 
ring to Can Grande of Verona ; but the number is a 
^ Really, cinqtiecento died e cinque, equals D V X = Dux. 



124 NAPOLEON AND MACHIAVELLI 

remarkable prophecy, for the first revolutions in Italy 
tending to national unity took place a little more than 
five hundred years after Dante's death ; and the Refor- 
mation began in 1520. 

However, we are not to suppose that Dante possessed 
such remarkable insight for future events as this would 
indicate ; and his immediate purpose was evidently the 
organization of an Italian power that would be strong 
enough both to repel foreign invaders, and to prevent the 
pope from interfering in purely secular affairs. This 
never came to pass until i860, and since that time there 
has been peace and prosperity in an united Italy. 



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